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The Youth of To-Day in 
the Life of To-Morrow 




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The Youth of To-Day in 
the Life of To-Morrow 

i 


By 

HOWARD PALMER YOUNG 

Member of the Des Moines Conference, Methodist 
Episcopal Church 

Author of "Character Through Recreation " 



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New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1923, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


BV633 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


To my Son 

ELLS WOR TIL R USSELL 












Foreword 


T HIS presentation of the forces that con¬ 
tribute to the furnishings of the youth of 
to-day for the life of to-morrow is the 
outgrowth of a practical touch with the groups of 
which this treatise deals. The consideration of 
the life of youth from the religious and Christian 
standpoint is intentional, for character is supreme 
among all life’s assets, and the Church bears the 
message which alone can give the highest purpose. 

It has not been my desire simply to write a 
book, but to bring an inspiration to those who 
labour to awaken and develop Christian character, 
that as the leaders of youth they may have opti¬ 
mistic courage for their task, and vision that shall 
not fail. The messages of these pages have come 
to me with insistent voices that would not be 
suppressed. Out of a heart that beats in unison 
with lovers of youth everywhere, I send these 
utterances forth. It is my earnest prayer that 
they who sail the craft of youth may hear the 
voice and catch the vision which bears to them the 
good purposes of God for their future, that their 
ship may not be stranded upon dangerous reefs or 
storm-driven to unfriendly shores, but may sail 
instead securely the charted seas of youthful years 
with spirit unafraid. 


7 


8 


FOREWORD 


We have reason to be grateful to those who have 
with courageous spirit and prayerful research 
established a vital connection between the natural 
and the spiritual, thus making a clearer path for 
youth to travel than their fathers were forced to 
tread. The right of the young to such a rich in¬ 
heritance cannot be denied. Personally, the author 
desires to express his indebtedness to the many 
sources of later day revelation which have simpli¬ 
fied life’s program and made possible clearer in¬ 
sight into the theme which he has treated in these 
pages. 

Howard Palmer Young. 


Contents 


I. The Fountain of Youth . . . u 

II. The Religious Experiences of Youth 24 

III. The Relation of the Church to 

Young Life .39 

IV. The Home Factor in Adolescent 

Religion. 55 

V. The Religious Perversities of Youth 70 

VI. The Public School and the Religious 

Life.84 

VII. The Contribution of the Church 

School.99 

VIII. Young People Organized for Service i 14 

IX. The College and Its Reach . . 128^ 

X. Habits and Amusements . . . 144 

XI. Youth and the Community . . 161 

XII. Young People in the Working World 178 

XIII. The Heroes of Youth . . 195 

XIV. Reaching the Goal .... 210 


9 


I 


THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 


i HE life of man has been divided into 
various periods, each of which challenges 
the attention and interest of the serious 
student of human nature. Such a division of the 
span of human life is common in both literature 
and science. Shakespeare makes one of his char¬ 
acters speak of the “ seven ages of man,”—“ the 
mewling infant;” “the whining schoolboy, creep¬ 
ing like a snail unwillingly to school; ” “ the lover, 
sighing like a furnace;” “the rough and bearded 
soldier; ” “ the portly middle-aged justice; ” “ the 
lean and slippered pantaloon;” and last of all, 
second childhood, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans 
taste, sans everything.” With more exact skill the 
scientist has classified human life into several divi¬ 
sions, including infancy, childhood, youth, and ma¬ 
turity. 

Individual thinkers may disagree as to what 
period of life is most deserving of our paramount 
interest and study. The writer remembers a high 
school commencement address in which the speaker 
fixed the attention of his hearers at once by his 
opening sentence, “ Of all the interesting things of 
life, the most interesting is a baby.” For many 
years the interest of the civilized world has cen¬ 
tered in the cradle life of mankind. Early child- 


ii 



12 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


hood has claimed the attention of the parent, the 
pedagogue, and the preacher. That this study has 
been productive of much good to both the infant 
and adult cannot be denied. Little children are 
physically so beautiful, so full of idealistic charm 
in the unfolding mental life, and so responsive to 
moral teaching, that it is not strange that the artist 
and the poet have vied with each other in depicting 
the glory and beauty of the child, while the scholar 
and the moralist have cultivated the fields of child¬ 
hood with the sincerest devotion. 

While we would not minimize the importance of 
the care and cultivation of the little child, we can 
but note with satisfaction that the world in these 
modern times is manifesting an increasing interest 
in the child of older years. The educator and the 
parent have found in the life of the half-grown 
boy and girl a practically untilled field for their 
cultivation and development. It has been discov¬ 
ered that from this fountain of youth are flowing 
influences which will affect the life of to-morrow 
in a marked degree. 

Scientific authorities indicate the years of the 
adolescent period as being from about the twelfth 
to the twenty-fourth year. This span of twelve 
years is subject to a division into three lesser 
periods, which—though not bound by hard and fast 
lines—correspond generally to the early period— 
twelve to fourteen years; the middle—fifteen to 
seventeen years; and the later—eighteen to twenty- 
four years. 

The importance of the study of youth, and in- 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


13 


deed of child life generally, may be understood at 
once when we consider how large a proportion of 
the race are found below the age of maturity. In 
the United States the total number of persons of 
public school age—from five to twenty years—ac¬ 
cording to the census of 1920, was 33,250,870. 
The activities of this great body of humanity chal¬ 
lenge our admiration and enthusiasm; for here are 
found the larger number of the learners of life, a 
great proportion of its workers, its teachers, its 
soldiers, and its saints. Among those of the im¬ 
mature years the incipient leaders of the great 
conquests of the world in manual industry, science, 
literature, and religion, all find their place. 

Some unknown writer has characterized youth as 
“ a wide, deep river, dividing childhood from man¬ 
hood; a river which, like the river of death, must 
be crossed without bridge or boat; through which 
each soul must go; into whose turbid waters the 
child must descend alone, knowing well that beneath 
their flood his childhood will be buried to rise no 
more; a stream both broad and turbulent, not to be 
crossed in a day or in a year; whose buoyant waters 
will indeed bear him up, but not without his efforts; 
whose currents will land him somewhere on the 
other shore; but, oh, so far down the stream on the 
dusty plains of sordid, sinful manhood, far out of 
sight of those green hills of childhood that were so 
near to heaven.” Into this realm of life, so fraught 
with possibilities, and so shrouded in mystery, 
which like an unexplored continent invites our 
attention and challenges our courage, we take our 


14 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


journey. Knowing the vastness of the area and 
the variety of its products we are not surprised that 
the mental characteristics of youth are difficult to 
analyze and understand. The mind of man has 
been practically an uncharted continent until the 
researches of the psychologist came to our assist¬ 
ance. The maturer portion of humanity are still 
often puzzled to understand the strangely con¬ 
tradictory moods of the youth with whom they 
have to deal. One writer characterizes the years 
of young life as “ the time of contradictions and 
anomalies/’ and says, “ the fiercest radicalisms, and 
most dogged conservatisms, irrepressible gaiety, 
bitter melancholy—all these moods are a part of 
that showery springtime of life.” 

But whatever may be said about the peculiar 
moods of the young we find that these years are 
big with the imaginative element, and filled with 
visions of power and glory that reflect their halo 
over the coming years. Joseph, the favourite son 
of Jacob, the Hebrew patriarch, dreamed of the 
sun, moon, and stars making obeisance to him, and 
of his brothers’ sheaves bowing to his in the field. 
The minds of the less imaginative elder brothers 
were impatient with the seeming folly of such 
visions, and the aged father reproved his favourite 
son for his idle dreaming. 

Yet Joseph’s dreams came true. And, quite 
unexpectedly to the commonplace adult life about 
them, young people are making real in the active 
work of the world their despised dreams of do¬ 
minion and power. It is with some surprise that 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


15 


educators have noted the youthful character of so 
great a number of the teachers in our common 
schools. Three hundred thousand teachers are em¬ 
ployed in the rural and village schools of the United 
States. It is estimated that nearly sixty per cent 
of the coming generation of the country are being 
instructed by these rural and village teachers. A 
leading educator says, “ An overwhelming major¬ 
ity of these 300,000 teachers have not passed the 
age of twenty-one; at least 100,000 of them are 
sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen years of age.” In 
a county institute where 150 teachers were in ses¬ 
sion it was found on taking an age census that only 
seven of the number were over twenty-one years 
old. Doubtless a wider investigation would reveal 
a similar result. A consideration of these facts 
warrants the conclusion that youth have become the 
teachers of our children and are conserving for us 
an educational program which those of maturer 
years have neglected for other pursuits. 

In the realm of physical prowess the youth of 
our land has likewise borne the heavy end of life's 
loads. Sufficient tribute can never be given to the 
willing workers of many family circles,—the un¬ 
known heroes and heroines of homespun character 
that have toiled to a vicarious extent in caring for 
the suffering, or lifting life’s financial burdens. 
Many a person has come to the years of adult life 
with a broken constitution or shortage of educa¬ 
tional training because in youth he carried burdens 
beyond his years. The intellectual sacrifices, the 
moral hurt, and the physical injuries which a great 


16 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


war inflicts upon the youth of the land can only 
be appreciated by the thoughtful student of national 
conditions. The aftermath of destructiveness of 
human life which for many years followed the 
Civil War, and the present uprising against author¬ 
ity which characterizes the years following the 
world conflict, are grim reminders of the prices 
which youth has paid and will continue to pay as 
a part of the debt of war. 

The spirit of adventure as well as the element of 
loyalty which is within the heart of the boy has 
caused him to be the first one to respond to the 
call of his country in time of war. /"It is startling, 
when we come to think of it, that our great national 
wars have been fought by the youth of the land. 
The records of the War Department show that in 
the Civil War about two and three-quarter millions 
of men w T ere in the Union army. Of these 
over 100,000 were fifteen years of age and under, 
while over a million were in their eighteenth year 
or below. Less than 50,000 were above the age 
of twenty-five years. Going back to the colonial 
days we find that there were 100,000 fifteen-year- 
old boys in the Revolutionary War, while many 
were much younger. The World War found its 
first volunteers among the boys of high school 
and college age.v The patriotic instinct seems es¬ 
pecially strong in the years of youth. While youth 
is with us, patriotism will not die. 

The heroism of youth has not been confined to 
the male sex. The recent war witnessed the going 
forth of multitudes of young women as nurses or 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


17 


other helpers, even to the shell-torn first-line 
trenches. For years past the world has heard with 
heart-stirring interest the stories of Joan of Arc, 
who heartened a nation’s army and led them forth 
to battle; of Florence Nightingale, the ministering 
angel of Crimea; of Grace Darling, who snatched 
the shipwrecked sailors from the slaughter of the 
sea; and later of Kate Shelley, the Iowa heroine, 
who braved the darkness and tempest to save a 
trainload of human beings from death in the tur¬ 
bulent river. 

The world is full of conquerable difficulties, of 
easily won battles, and quickly solved problems— 
so great is the optimistic faith of the young. 
Where others hesitate he treads with steady step, 
and where the faltering hand of older years would 
fail, the firm and fearless grasp of youth often 
wins surprising victories. The poet who sang the 
praise of the majority age of youth with a few 
master strokes pictures the possibilities of the 
young: 

“ The world delights, the world invites, 

When you are twenty-one, 

The forests wave their arms to you, 

The waters sing sweet songs to you, 

The breezes blow perfumes to you, 

When you are twenty-one. 

“ The world commands, the world demands, 
When you are twenty-one, 

Ideals to right the wrongs of it, 

Strong hands to do the work of it, 

And love to warm the heart of it, 

When you are twenty-one.” 


18 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


It is the beckoning hands of these alluring pos¬ 
sibilities which cause the youth with quickening 
heart-beat to hasten toward life’s goals. Realiz¬ 
ing that he is no longer a child, he will look for¬ 
ward to the forming of a home of his own and the 
means of a livelihood. The age of romance is 
upon him and the choosing of a life partner is his 
joyful and necessary privilege. 

The period of later adolescence is recognized by 
medical authorities as the proper time for marriage. 
The mutual attraction of the sexes, however, begins 
much earlier, and the choice of a helpmeet is often 
made before the youth reaches his majority. The 
records of the United States census show that the 
number of married females between the ages of 
fifteen and nineteen years is over ten times as great 
as among males. In the years between twenty and 
twenty-four the per cent of married males is 
twenty-four, while the per cent of married females 
is more than double the number. Some conflicting 
opinions are found concerning the proper period for 
human mating. One writer recommends not more 
than three generations to the century, while another 
is equally positive in advocating not more than two. 
Prof. Roswell H. Johnson says that the intellectual 
classes marry later, and the race deteriorates as a 
result. Dr. Charles W. Eliot says that “ post¬ 
poned marriage is a great modern evil in educated 
society.” The peculiar ways of Cupid are not 
easily regulated by the scientist, however, and the 
statistician can present no tabulation concerning 
youth’s heart stories; but human experience demon- 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


19 


strates that the days of love and courtship, if not 
the actual time of mating, are located well within 
the period which we study. The age of youth is 
preeminently the age of fast friendships and lasting 
loves. 

The occupation of the youth is often selected 
much earlier than his life companion. Even be¬ 
fore his teens his eye is fixed upon some guiding 
star in the great expanse of business or profes¬ 
sional life. In vain may parental authority 
struggle to prevent Isaac Watts from becoming a 
poet, to make John Jacob Astor a butcher, or 
Schiller a surgeon, or Handel a lawyer, or to dis¬ 
courage Benjamin West from following the artistic 
bent,—the youthful choice prevails. 

The deductions of Lancaster concerning the age 
at which professional characters develop their suc¬ 
cesses is interesting data relative to the preemi¬ 
nence of youth as the period of great accomplish¬ 
ments. While in some occupations it was found 
that success was not reached until in later life, he 
shows that of one hundred actors the average of 
their first success was eighteen years,—from six¬ 
teen to twenty years being the prominent period; 
of fifty-three artists, ninety per cent showed talent 
before twenty, the average being a little more than 
seventeen years; in the case of one hundred and 
eighteen scientists the fires of talent began to glow 
before the age of nineteen; while of one hundred 
musicians ninety-five showed exceptional talent be¬ 
fore sixteen, and the average age of marked ability 
was less than ten years in this talent,—which is the 


20 


THE YOTJTH OF TO-DAY 


most precocious of all. No doubt the early choices 
of these life occupations and the marked success 
which came to the youth who followed them were 
the result of some secret message of adaptability 
written upon the individual heart, or some vision 
of service which meditative moments had revealed. 

The normal visions of youth are full of desire 
for nobility and the higher things of life. The 
desire to do, to achieve, to conquer, is an intrinsic 
element of adolescence. Even such souls as Helen 
Keller, whom an unkind fate seemed to have 
destined for an earth-bound existence, can say, 
“ While I walk with unsteady steps in my chamber, 
my spirit sweeps skyward on eagle wings and looks 
out with unquenchable vision upon a world of 
eternal beauty.” 

It is this capacity for the spiritual that makes 
the period of youth such a fruitful one for relig¬ 
ious cultivation. Both childhood and youth mani¬ 
fest the keenest interest in the spiritual life. The 
child that does not very early in life under en¬ 
couraging environment show this trait of character 
must be considered as abnormal. 

The recognition of this characteristic has caused 
the Church to have a new kindling of interest in 
the religion of the adolescent. This awakening 
has come almost simultaneously with the vision of 
youth’s new value in the intellectual and physical 
realms of life. This new discovery has been 
brought about in part at least by the tabulation of 
certain facts of individual Christian experience 
which show beyond a doubt that the larger number 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MORROW 


21 


of decisive religious awakenings take place before 
the age of twenty. Researches have also proven 
that there are three well marked periods of re¬ 
ligious awakening—the first at about the age of 
twelve or thirteen,—the second at sixteen or seven¬ 
teen, and the third at about twenty years. Such 
tangible evidence makes clear the fact that the be¬ 
ginnings of the Christian life—when a definite date 
may be discovered in the individual experience— 
are most frequently within the period of adoles¬ 
cence. Youth is quite appropriately the time of 
religious decisions as it is also the time of life’s 
other great choices. 

The paradoxical character of this period of 
“ storm and stress ” makes it also possible to find 
within these years the elements of insubordination 
and moral delinquency. Not only does the youth 
go up to the temple to seek the things of his Father, 
but the younger son—the prodigal—wanders into 
the far country to spend his substance in riotous 
living. It sometimes happens that the tendency to 
doubt breaks out in virulent form, and certain long- 
accepted truths are suddenly thrown into the 
youth’s intellectual scrap heap. Especially is this 
true if the environment at all favours such a mental 
state. A number of years ago the precocious son 
of an eastern college professor, while discoursing 
of things ordinarily beyond the years of youth, 
said to a group of adult associates, “ I know no 
God,—I have never seen Him,—no one has seen 
Him. There is no such a being.” Such abnor¬ 
mality may cling to the life and ruin it forever un- 


22 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


less it is met by some influence that leads the youth 
back to the Christian revelation. 

The juvenile courts have furnished abundant 
evidence of the prevalence of youthful crime, as 
religious agencies have likewise indicated the pos¬ 
sibility of religious experience in childhood and 
youth. A recent authority balances one fact 
against the other in the following words: “ In the 
strategic years between twelve and twenty occur 
sixty-eight per cent of first crimes and seventy per 
cent of all conversions.” Some years ago the 
writer obtained from a personal friend,—an old 
penitentiary chaplain,—a tabulation of the con¬ 
victs in his institution. Out of a total of a little 
over three thousand, more than sixteen hundred 
were below the age of twenty-five. The venerable 
clergyman remarked, “ Most of the crimes are 
committed when the criminals are from eighteen 
to twenty-five years of age.” His exhortation is 
still timely: “Take care of the boys—especially 
take care of the boys. You have boys in your 
homes, in your schools, on your streets, who will 
be in the penitentiary in a few years. Their kind 
are there now, and these will be if you don’t look 
out. They are coming nearly every day. The age 
from fifteen to twenty determines character and 
destiny.” 

Thus do we find that the fountain of youth is 
the source from which life’s currents are peren¬ 
nially renewed. The searcher for an invigorating 
stream which shall make new his personal powers 
may be disappointed in his quest; but the student of 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOKKOW 


23 


life’s problems who seeks to find the power by 
which the social life may defeat stagnation and 
death will cherish humanity’s youthful years as 
the saving salt which has not yet lost its savour. 
The years of youth have within them the potenti¬ 
ality that can build a temple of character to stand 
among the mansions eternal in the city never built 
with hands, or blast the fairest flowers that grow 
in the sacred gardens of life. 

Once, when a child, I was entertained with my 
parents in the home of an aged man whose early 
residence had been beside the sea. Among the 
objects of interest calculated to amuse the childish 
fancy, was a large prism which had been a part of 
the equipment of a lighthouse on the coast. Hold¬ 
ing it up to look through, all the objects upon which 
the eye rested were bordered with beautiful rain¬ 
bow colours. Thus the vision of youth may behold 
every common task and every untrodden path 
framed in the unbraided strands of pristine glory. 
As leaders of the young it is your task and mine 
so to set the prism that from the better ways and 
higher things of life the rainbow shall not fade, 
that those entrusted to our care may have light 
to guide them safely till manhood’s day has 
dawned. 


II 


THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES 
OF YOUTH 

T HE poet has sung, “ The thoughts of 
youth are long, long thoughts.” We are 
reminded early in our study of the dif¬ 
ficulty under which those of maturer years labour 
in interpreting the experiences of the young. The 
years that have intervened between childhood and 
age have changed the hue of some of the events of 
earlier days, and it must be admitted that we speak 
with less certain knowledge than those of younger 
years might speak if they could have some of the 
advantages of maturity to aid them in expressing 
their “ long, long thoughts.” The ideal history 
of the religious life of the adolescent can probably 
be written only by the youth himself. However, 
with the limitations which surround us it is prob¬ 
able that an analysis of some of the outstanding 
features of the adolescent religious experience may 
not be without considerable value to many who 
have long “ worked in the dark ” with the young 
people entrusted to their care. It may likewise 
prove of help to the youth who seeks to understand 
himself. 

The one who attempts to analyze any subject 

24 


THE LIFE OF TO-MOKKOW 


25 



with scientific accuracy will discover some things 
which do not agree with the theories he may have 
previously held regarding the matter investigated. 
A scientific consideration of the subject demands 
that the facts be ascertained first and the theory 
be deduced from the facts. Many of the ideas of 
a former age concerning the religion of childhood 
and youth were based upon previously constructed 
theories. Such a predetermined attitude is de¬ 
structive to the real understanding of the character 
of Christian things as well as of any other experi¬ 
ence in life. 

A primary cause of misunderstandings regard¬ 
ing the religious life of youth is to be found in a 
failure on the part of those in a past age to under¬ 
stand youth itself. In earlier years both the 
scientist and the theologian recognized no inter¬ 
mediate condition of life between childhood and 
maturity. All children were considered children 
until they were fully grown. The manner of the 
treatment and training of the growing youth was 
not particularly different from that given the child 
of more tender years. 

Though some distinction was made between the 
child and the adult,—in that the child was under 
some restraints and often subject to almost impos¬ 
sible standards of obedience and servility,—he was 
yet regarded by many as a miniature adult. What¬ 
ever was good for the adult was thought to be good 
for the child. In intellectual life, in physical ac¬ 
tivities, and in spiritual gifts he was supposed to 
be but a small sized edition of his elders. 


26 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


An examination of old portraits and paintings, 
as well as written records, reveals the fact that even 
the costumes of children did not differ from adults. 
Going back as far as the sixteenth century we find 
little children of both sexes of the well-to-do 
classes, even at a very tender age, dressed in stiffly- 
stayed costumes and costly jewels, with the restric¬ 
tions of life which such conditions would entail. 
During the period intervening—up to more modem 
times—the true spirit of childhood was looked upon 
with distrust and suspicion. An authority on 
educational conditions in the eighteenth century 
says, “ The dancing master was the most important 
factor in the whole educational situation. His 
function was to make little children into young 
ladies and gentlemen as expeditiously as possible.” 

When we enter the circle of those whose interest 
in childhood was religious we find similar concep¬ 
tions. It was in accord with the prevailing ascetic 
type of the Church that the seemingly frivolous 
things of childhood should be laid aside by the one 
professing godliness, no matter what his years 
might be. Francke, of Halle, a man of consider¬ 
able note in educational and philanthropic lines, in 
the eighteenth century, said: 

“ Play must be forbidden in any and all of its 
forms. The children must be instructed in such a 
manner as to show them, through the presentation of 
religious principles, the wastefulness and folly of all 
play. They shall be led to see that play will distract 
their minds from God, the Eternal Good, and will 
work nothing but harm to their spiritual lives.” 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


27 


The austere manner in which little children were 
instructed in colonial times is revealed by Cotton 
Mather’s account of his dealing with his little 
daughter in matters pertaining to her spiritual wel¬ 
fare. It should be remembered that the child was 
only four years of age at the time of this serious 
deliverance: 


“ I took my little daughter Katy into my Study, and 
then I told my child that I am to dye Shortly and she 
must, when I am dead remember Everything I now 
said unto her. I set before her the Sinful Condition 
of her Nature, and I charged her to pray in Secret 
Places every day that God for the sake of Jesus 
Christ would give her a new Heart. I gave her to 
understand that when I am taken from her she must 
look to meet with more humbling afflictions than she 
does now she has a Tender Father to provide for 
her.” 


It cannot be said that we are yet free from the 
idea that in religious matters the child and the adult 
are still upon the same foundation. Religion is 
still thought of as an adult proposition, and instead 
of reading the words of the Master, “ Except ye 
turn and become as little children,” we are prone 
to think, if not to say to the child, “ Except ye 
turn, and become as an adult, ye shall not enter the 
kingdom.” The right of the child and the youth 
to begin the religious life on his own footing is 
not yet wholly secured. The misguided apostles 
who forbade parents to bring their children to 
Christ for His blessing, have found some succes- 


28 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


sors among those who ignorantly reach forth 
their hands to hinder the advancing youth who de¬ 
sires to confess Christ for himself. 

The experience of a minister which was told in 
a Toronto preachers’ meeting a few years ago can 
doubtless be duplicated in many instances. The 
minister said, “ When I was a little boy, about ten 
years of age, I attended a revival meeting and was 
much affected by the preaching. One evening, in 
response to a fervent appeal, I went forward and 
knelt at the altar. I felt that I really wanted to 
give my heart to God. After I had been kneeling 
for a while, one of the stewards of the church came 
and laid his hand on my shoulder and said: 4 Little 
boy, when you get bigger and older you will know 
what this means. Just sit on one of the side pews 
and make room for the older people.’ My heart 
was broken, and I went away from the church, 
never to have any further religious feelings for 
years. This experience accounts for the fact that 
I did not join the church until after I was twenty- 
one.” 

The error of the personal misunderstanding of 
the child’s religious aspirations is associated with a 
misconception concerning his theological status. 
Certain theoretical ideas of the inherited nature of 
sin have long held sway within the Church, which 
have influenced conclusions concerning the salva¬ 
tion of the children and the youth. It is with re¬ 
luctance that the crude thought of the moral re¬ 
sponsibility of infants has been abandoned. The 
echo of a dismal theology which spoke of 44 infants 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


29 


in hell not more than a span long,” is still heard. 
The couplet 

“ In Adam’s fall 
We sinned all,” 

even though matched by the absurdly facetious 
couplet 

“ In Cain, his murder, 

We sinned furder,” 

represents a theological notion that in a past gen¬ 
eration has demanded of little children a com¬ 
pliance with forms of repentance and religious ac¬ 
ceptance which are only adapted to adult life. 

Although our subject does not deal directly with 
the small child, the relations of childhood and youth 
are such that we cannot avoid considering in some 
degree the relation of infants and small children 
to the Kingdom of Christ. As the religion of 
youth is indebted for its beginning to the years 
previous to adolescence, some brief consideration 
of the abstruse question of “ original sin ” seems 
quite necessary. 

A gradual change of thought concerning the 
question “ Is the child born regenerate? ” is trace¬ 
able in the statements of theologians. From the 
extreme notion that all infants were born in a 
state of sin, as a result of an evil inheritance, we 
have reached the place where,—either through bap¬ 
tism, or a mysterious election, or a kind provision 
of grace,—(as one writer says) “ the child at birth 
is met by the benefits of Christ’s atonement and 


30 


THE YOUTH OP TO-DAY 


placed in a state of salvation,”—so that by a large 
proportion of the Christian Church the child is now 
accepted as a member of the Kingdom of Christ. 

It is true that there are yet some who have not 
grasped the idea that the child has a birthright 
inheritance in the Kingdom of God. Not long 
ago certain statements of religious belief adopted 
by a considerable body of Christians contained 
this statement concerning the relation of mankind 
to inherited sin: “We believe that this spiritual 
death, or total corruption of human nature, has 
been transmitted to the entire race of man, the man 
Christ Jesus alone excepted; and hence that every 
child of Adam is born into the world with a nature 
which not only possesses no spark of Divine life, 
but is essentially and unchangeably bad, being en¬ 
mity against God, and incapable by any educa¬ 
tional process whatever of subjection to His law.” 

As a directly opposite definition of the child’s 
relation to God the recent statement of a leading 
churchman seems to be a fair presentation of the 
modern view of the case: “ Children do not begin 
life in alienation from God, but through the un¬ 
conditional and universal benefits of Christ’s aton¬ 
ing redemption, begin as God’s children, and as 
such belong to the Kingdom of God; and being so 
related to God are entitled to be regarded as His 
children and by all care and nurture and guidance 
and protection to be kept in the kingdom to which 
they belong through Christ’s grace at birth.” 

Added to the mature conclusions of the theo¬ 
logian concerning the status of the child in the 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


31 


things of grace, we have certain important infer¬ 
ences which the scientist has gathered to aid us 
in our knowledge of youth’s religious life. The 
recent teachers of religious psychology, through 
patient investigation, have brought to light so many 
facts in their researches in personal experience that 
we are now treading upon solid ground, no longer 
hindered by the fogs of theological discussion, in 
our efforts to classify the religious experiences of 
men. The mental states and emotional conditions 
of the whole period of adolescence have been gone 
over, and the results of such surveys are considered 
of marked value by those who to-day are earnestly 
endeavouring to accomplish the best in the Chris¬ 
tian training of youth. 

As a basis for our consideration of the character¬ 
istics of the adolescent religious life, we may take 
the words of Prof. Norman E. Richardson: 

“ There are three outstanding types of experiences 
that are seen in the religious unfolding of the adoles¬ 
cent life. One is dominantly volitional; another is 
emotional; and the third is intellectual. At the dawn 
of early adolescence, the child is supremely inter¬ 
ested in doing religious things. At sixteen, religious 
experiences affect his emotions, particularly. At 
nineteen, or later, his religious interest centers in 
beliefs, doctrines, theology, creeds.” 

It must be understood that certain varying con¬ 
ditions of personal life, and differing degrees of 
natural development forbid us to make a time-table 
for each changing characteristic in any religious 


32 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


experience. It should be considered also, that, as 
Prof. Richardson says, “ The majority of young 
people do not have a completed adolescence.” 

It will be remembered that the first natural 
period which has been assigned for the personal 
religious awakening, or “ conversion ” of the 
youth, is the age of twelve years. Even Jewish 
traditional practices accord with this idea, for it 
was at this age that the Jewish boy became “ a son 
of the law.” The boy Jesus went up to the temple 
at the age of twelve, tarrying there under the 
Divine compulsion that He “ must be about the 
things of His Father.” The examination of many 
cases of religious experience show an awakening at 
about this age, but the preponderance of statistics 
has seemed to indicate that the beginning of the 
middle period (sixteen in the case of boys, and 
fourteen or fifteen in the case of girls) has revealed 
a larger per cent of conversions. Concerning this 
matter, however, Prof. George Albert Coe says: 

“ Contrary to my former view, and to the view of 
Starbuck, I am convinced that early rather than 
middle adolescence is the more important turning 
point. Conversions that occur at sixteen and seven¬ 
teen seem to me to represent cases in which develop¬ 
ment of the religious sense did not proceed normally 
during the preceding four or five years; they are 
essentially an effort to ‘ catch up.’ ” 

The many instances of a desire upon the part 
of the children just reaching adolescence to confess 
Christ and unite with the church, as well as certain 
social and physical changes which occur at this 


r 


IN THE LIFE OF TOMORROW 


33 


time, indicate this as the normal period for a 
spiritual crisis. The fact that it does not reveal 
itself in a conversion experience is often due to 
adult interference for which parents and teachers 
are morally responsible. Where conversions do 
occur at this early age they are probably not as 
emotional as those of middle adolescence. Re¬ 
ligion appears to the child of this age more as a 
thing to use, rather than a creed to believe. His 
life is one of activity, and religion must be activity 
or it is nothing to him. 

A fine manifestation of the religious instinct 
was noted in a boy of my acquaintance who sought 
to induce a boy from a poor family to attend Sun¬ 
day school. Both boys were about fourteen years 
of age. The one who was solicited said, “ But I 
have no clothes.” His new found friend started 
out with a subscription paper and in response to his 
boyish appeals among the church people, was soon 
able to provide a comfortable outfit for the forlorn 
chap. Thus the boy from this unchurched family 
was brought into the Sunday school, with the result 
of a beneficent religious influence upon the re¬ 
mainder of the family as well. Such is the type 
of early adolescent religion. Would that the 
Church might learn from “ the child in the midst.” 

The instance illustrates also that the religion of 
youth is enamoured with the sense of reality. With 
all the fun-loving propensities that belong to the 
period, life is never more real and earnest than to 
the growing boy and girl. Youth has no respect 
for religious sham, and no keener discernment of 


34 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


unreality and hypocrisy may be found in adult life 
than many adolescent youngsters exhibit. That 
peculiar type of religio-philosophy which considers 
sin, sickness, and death as unreal, furnishes little 
attraction for the normal youth, but gathers its 
devotees from the maturer portion of humanity on 
whom the delights of the sense life have begun to 
pall. 

Not only do the things of sense have real value 
to youth, but the finer spiritual values are cherished 
as well. In the middle years it may seem as if 
the boy and girl are strangely careless concerning 
the gifts and caresses heaped upon them, but their 
stolidity is after all only a seeming. Love, and 
friendship, and the finer things of life, have the 
highest values to the growing youth, though he may 
not express his feelings. The period is one of 
strong friendships, chumships, and cliques. The 
thought of Christianity as a friendship takes espe¬ 
cial hold on young life at this time. Loyalty, 
heroism, and fellowship are the elements in a 
Christian life that make a strong appeal to youth, 
and they are to him the vital purposes in Christian 
living. 

Perhaps there is no better index to the prevailing 
religious emotions of youth than their confessions 
as to “ favourite hymns.” A few years ago a Hart¬ 
ford professor, Dr. Aris Knight, sent out a ques¬ 
tionnaire asking a large number of young people 
this question: “ What is your favourite hymn?” 
Though the classification of ages (ten to twenty) 
does not admit of much distinction between those 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


35 


of adolescent and preadolescent years, the results 
of the questionnaire are quite suggestive. “ On¬ 
ward, Christian Soldiers ” was the first choice, 
representing one hundred and eight out of a total 
of the six hundred and twenty-four who replied. 
“ Nearer, My God, to Thee,” stood second in the 
list, and “ I Love to Tell the Story,” was third, 
while other choice hymns follow. The ideals of 
heroism, fellowship, and service stand out in these 
hymns as characteristic of the heart ambitions of 
youth. 

It is during the years of adolescence also that 
youth seeks for himself a firm footing in the things 
of personal faith. He is often assailed by doubts 
of dangerous form, and many spiritual wrecks are 
due to the attempt of unwise parents and teachers 
to implant ancient notions in modern minds. I 
can well remember that stubborn resistance which 
I felt it necessary to put up as boy to maintain the 
“ faith once delivered.” Sheltered from the cold 
blasts of skepticism, I had reached the age of six¬ 
teen before having thrown into my face by a 
skeptical boarder in the family a doubt regarding 
the historical character of the creation narrative of 
the Bible. It was the beginning of a long battle,— 
the things of traditional religious faith against the 
more modern thought of scientific men,—fought 
out upon the silent battle-fields of my own heart, 
which college years and manhood’s maturer faith 
could only settle. 

Thus do the experiences of youth run the gamut 
from the unreasoning faith of childhood, over high 


36 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


mountain tops of joy, into deep vales of doubt, to 
the clear plains of manhood faith. We note also 
that the beginnings of the religious faith of youth 
are variable as well. With some there seems to 
have been no day or date when they were con¬ 
scious of any acceptance of Christ, and likewise no 
day when they rejected Him. When favourable 
opportunity came they joined the church, but they 
do not date their religious life from that date. 
With others, a definite day came, when either alone 
or in the company of others, they publicly made 
known their decision to “ follow Christ.” This 
experience was usually not specially marked with 
emotion; only a comfortable sense of having “ done 
right,” was the prevailing conviction. Others 
yet—having been brought up with the theological 
notion that when they “ reached the years of ac¬ 
countability,” they must have an experience of con¬ 
version of the emotional type, have sought and 
found such an experience. Of the various types, 
the first and second are probably the most common 
to-day. Doubtless the ideal is represented by the 
child who knows not the hour of wilful departure 
from the Father’s house. This does not mean that 
the child is morally faultless, and the forgiveness of 
sin unnecessary, nor does it indicate that the grace 
of God is not operative in the life of the child that 
through education and environment retains his 
spiritual heritage. 

Side by side with those who in youth have pro¬ 
fessed their faith in Christ in the manner outlined, 
will ever be those who have returned to the Father’s 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 37 

house after years of wandering in sin. These, like 
the prodigal, have forfeited their birthright for the 
pottage of the world, and have returned again to 
find the grace of God able to save. Some of these 
may yet be within the years of youth, but the char¬ 
acter of their religious transformation will prob¬ 
ably be of the type of the more mature. While 
the Church must ever seek to win the wanderer, we 
must believe that the normal type of Christian ex¬ 
perience is represented by those ever kept within 
the fold. The two types of Christian experience 
may be illustrated in some degree by the climactic 
conversion of Saul of Tarsus, with the flaming 
light, the heavenly voice and the vision of the risen 
Christ; and the far different, but fully as effective 
experience of Timothy, whose spiritual life had its 
beginnings at a mother’s knee. The apostle of the 
Damascus road conversion becomes the friend and 
fellow-worker of the youth who had an inheritance 
of faith from godly Lois, and faithful Eunice. 
Thus may even those of differing religious experi¬ 
ence to-day sing from the heart a similar song of 
praise to the redeeming Christ. The experience of 
one may be: 

“ You ask me why I gave my heart to Christ? 

I can reply; 

It is a wondrous story; listen while 
I tell you why. 

My heart was drawn at length to see His face. 

I was alone, I had no resting place; 

I heard of how He loved me, with a love 

Of depths so great—of heights so far above 


38 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


All human ken. 

I longed such love to share, 

And sought it then 
Upon my knees in prayer.” 

And the experience of the other is told: 

“ You ask me when I gave my heart to Christ? 

I cannot tell 

Just when His blessing first my sense befell; 

I know full well 
That long ago, when but a child, 

And all this earth before me brightly smiled, 
His bride, my mother taught me that in all, 
This precious love, He bade me “ Father ” call, 
I do not know 

'Tis He alone can tell you when ; 

I only know 

As babe seeks breast I sought Him then.” 


Ill 


THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO 

YOUNG LIFE 


T HE new awakening of the Church to the 
value of the religion of youth is the most 
significant religious discovery of modern 
times. While in the past certain bodies of the 
Protestant Church have paid some attention to the 
religious nurture of the young, there has never been 
such a determined effort to save the coming gen¬ 
eration as is now being inaugurated in the Christian 
Church. We can but earnestly hope that the 
former carelessness concerning the vital question of 
youth’s religious training will soon be replaced with 
a general program of Christian nurture which will 
lead the young life in safe and certain moral paths. 

That the Church has very largely failed in the 
religious nurture of the child is a conclusion which 
requires no argument to demonstrate. No doubt 
we have often been confronted with the question, 
Can the Church perpetuate itself from its own fam¬ 
ily circles? The old commandment speaks of the 
iniquity of the fathers reaching to the third and 
fourth generation; but there are doubtless large 
divisions of the Church which must plead guilty to 
failure in thus perpetuating righteousness. A pas¬ 
tor argued before his official board the need of the 

39 


40 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Church’s deeper interest in youth, and asked the 
question, “If the leaders of this church were sud¬ 
denly removed by death or change of residence, 
would the work of this church be carried on and 
supported by their descendants ? ” An elderly 
member of the board,—all but one of whose six 
adult children were outside of the church,—shook 
his head as he sadly answered, “ No.” Other mem¬ 
bers of the board,—one of whom was a woman 
with ten irreligious sons,—could give no other 
answer. 

> The methods formerly employed by the Church 
to secure and save its youth have evidently been at 
fault, or such failures would not constantly con¬ 
front us. Why failure has thus met us can be 
easily accounted for when we think how cursory 
and intermittent have been our efforts for the sal¬ 
vation of the young. To a great degree the Church 
has depended on the annual revival service as the 
ingathering of souls for the year,—the intensity of 
which has resulted in an uplift to the Church and 
usually produced some fruit in the conversion of 
both old and young. The spiritual activities suited 
to youth’s need during the remainder of the year 
have consisted largely in the work of the Sunday 
school where the teaching has been of the most un¬ 
skillful sort. In countless individual cases young 
people have left the Sunday school in the most vital 
years of life, and drifted from the church, with no 
well directed efforts to prevent their departure. 
The “ wild oats ” period of life has ensued,—for 
many years complacently accepted as a necessary 




IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


41 


accompaniment of youth’s years. The return of 
the revival season has witnessed but a tithe of these 
wasted souls gathered in, possibly only to a fitful 
and uncertain spiritual life, with many of those 
thus converted returning again to the more alluring 
ways of sin. 

The apology for such spiritual tragedies has been 
a firmly fixed belief that Satan had foreclosed a 
mortgage on the human race, and the inference was 
not wanting that the power of redemption was not 
sufficient to overcome his nefarious designs. But 
with the dawning of a better day, we find the 
Church with hopeful determination reaching out to 
save the youth everywhere. In thus saving the 
youth the Church will save itself, for only youth’s 
courage and sacrifice can secure the ultimate tri¬ 
umph of Christ’s kingdom. 

Some hint is given concerning the relation of 
youth to the Church’s victorious faith in the writ¬ 
ings of a Christian of the second century, whose 
words were much revered by the disciples of that 
early day. Pastor Hermas,—as he was called,— 
saw an aged woman, with every evidence of weak¬ 
ness and infirmity, sitting on a chair. He was told 
that this woman represented the Church. After 
this he saw a strong woman, in the life of maturity, 
who was superintending the erection of a great 
tower upon the waters, with multitudes of work¬ 
men employed. This woman also represented the 
Church. Last of all, he saw a beautiful young 
woman, a perfect type of health and womanly 
grace, and lo! she was the Church. Seeking the ex- 


42 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


planation, he was told that the changing vision 
illustrated the condition of his own faith concern¬ 
ing the Church. When it was weak, the Church 
likewise was weak; when it increased, the Church 
grew in power and activity, but the highest vision 
came when with the eye of faith he saw in her 
great beauty and youthfulness the prophecy of her 
wonderful future. 

The Master Himself set great store by the 
thought that the place of young life in the kingdom 
was important. As a sample of the ideal inhabi¬ 
tant of His kingdom, He placed “ the child in the 
midst.” True, He did not despair of the most 
sinful, but of those who were very far away He 
seems to have reached but a few—one woman of 
sin at a wayside well, and one thief who compan¬ 
ioned with Him on the cross. Crowds of children, 
however, thronged Him to seek His blessing, and 
filled the temple courts to sing His praise. His 
disciples were chosen from the young, and only two 
aged men are spoken of as-being among His friends 
—Joseph of Arimathsea, who gave his garden as 
the burial place of the crucified Christ, and Nico- 
demus, who brought his gift of fragrant spices 
after Jesus was dead. Eager and willing are the 
feet of youth to follow Him, and slow are the aged 
to seek His favour. 

As in the beginning, so to-day, the hope of the 
Church is in laying the foundations of faith in 
childhood and youth. We do not doubt that the 
power of Divine grace, combined with the God- 
given human will, can overcome—through stern 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


43 


struggles—the influence of an evil heredity and the 
habits of years of indulgence in sin; but we are 
certain that the easier moulding of character is ac¬ 
complished when the life is fresher from the hand 
of God. Nature teaches lessons that the Church 
cannot despise. 

“ I took a piece of plastic clay 
And fondly fashioned it one day, 

And as my fingers pressed it still, 

It moved and yielded to my will. 

“ I came again when the days were past; 

The bit of clay was hard at last. 

The form I gave it still it bore, 

But I could change that form no more. 

“ I took a piece of living clay 
And gently formed it day by day, 

And moulded with my power and art 
A young child’s soft and yielding heart. 

“ I came again when years were gone; 

It was a man I looked upon; 

He still that early impress wore 
And I could change him nevermore.” 

It cannot be denied that this conception of the 
Church’s responsibility for the spiritual ideals of 
the coming generation brings a wider program of 
moral endeavour before us. If there ever was a 
time when the Church could excuse the weakness of 
its efforts for the salvation of youth on the ground 
that only a few were to be saved—a Divinely 
chosen number from an unregenerate world,—it 
can now no longer rest in such complacency. The 


44 


THE YOUTH OE TO-DAY 


obligation is to save all. And, unlike the plastic 
clay which may be fashioned in a moment and set 
in the sun to dry into permanent shape, no stereo¬ 
typed moral condition can be produced by religious 
endeavour, and constant care and training are 
necessary for the preservation of high ideals and 
true character. The Church cannot concern itself 
unduly with the dates of religious experience,— 
soul-cheering as they may be with their richness of 
emotional memories. It must think of religious 
life as a state, rather than a date ,—a condition 
ever present, rather than a basket of yesterday’s 
manna, which becomes corrupted with the lapse of 
time. 

Building upon the consciousness of the child’s 
right to the kingdom—the realization of the truth 
of the Master’s declaration that “ of such is the 
kingdom of heaven ”—the Church has taken up a 
new mission of revealing to the child his relation to 
the Heavenly Father and his inheritance to things 
eternal. We are now engaged not only in rescuing 
as many as possible from lives of sin, but we are 
trying to prevent the loss of those who previously 
were allowed to wander away from their first 
estate of childhood grace. Christian workers are 
sometimes misunderstood as they carry out this 
program of character formation. A junior worker 
said to her pastor, “ Some folks say to me concern¬ 
ing the children in my department as I try to teach 
them prayer and the other elements of the Christian 
life, * Have these children had a change of heart? ’ 
What am I to say to them ? ” The pastor replied, 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


45 


“ Tell them that is exactly what you are trying to 
prevent. Tell them that your work is an effort to 
see that they shall not be changed by the evil envi¬ 
ronment and lack of Christian nurture from the 
faith of childhood to a life which is sinful and 
corrupt/’ 

The modern Church needs not so much to worry 
over the seeming lack of the child or young person 
to experience theological propositions, as to be con¬ 
cerned whether it is doing its part to secure for the 
youth in its care its religious rights in practical and 
personal piety. It is unquestionably true that re¬ 
ligious life is the result of personal choice, but the 
efforts of the Church may be so well directed that 
youth will never think of an adverse spiritual de¬ 
cision when it comes to any forking of life’s ways. 

It is undeniably true that the Church formerly 
dealt unwisely with the religious life of childhood 
and youth. Doubtless some revival movements 
have done great harm to the after life of the child 
by the unintelligent manner in which the claims of 
Christ upon personal life were presented during the 
junior and intermediate years. A thoughtful 
student of the religious nature of the child cannot 
but have doubts concerning the method of evangel¬ 
istic presentation to children recommended by a 
foremost “ children’s evangelist ” of some years 
since, whose plan has doubtless been used by a 
great many other workers with children. He says, 
concerning the preacher’s message: 

“ He must dwell on the sufferings of Christ until 


46 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


the children see Him vividly crucified before them. 
They must see the crown of thorns upon His brow. 
They must see the heavy lashes laid upon His bare, 
bleeding back. They must hear the shout of the mob 
as they cry, * Away with Him! Crucify Him!' 
They must see the cross laid upon His bleeding, quiv¬ 
ering form, and then follow Him as He bears it along 
the Via Dolorosa. They must hear the heavy mallet, 
as with blow after blow the nails pierce His hands 
and feet. . . . They should be called upon to 

listen to at least some of the seven sorrowful cries 
which He uttered as He hung upon the cross; and 
when the cry reaches their ears, ‘ My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me ? ’ they should be taught 
that He was forsaken that they might not be for¬ 
saken; that all these sufferings, especially His soul 
sufferings, . . . were endured in their stead. 

. . . Especially should great stress be laid upon 

the doctrine of substitution. Children as young as 
five and six years of age can understand this doc¬ 
trine, if it is illustrated in a simple manner.” 

The effect of such a presentation upon the child 
is inclined to produce an unreal and often morbid 
type of Christianity; and, it is to be feared, to con¬ 
tribute in no small degree to the great number of 
“ backsliders ” which meet us whenever we come 
to investigate individually our field of Christian 
service. Because of the after effects of such 
methods it were well that the matter of evangelistic 
preaching to children receive a more intelligent 
treatment than it has been given in the thought of 
Christian workers. 

But has the revival service no message for the 
children and the youth? Yes,—for the smaller 
child it has the message of the Fatherhood of God, 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOBBOW 


47 


and their inheritance in the things of the kingdom. 
For the older child, a clear presentation of Jesus as 
a Friend, an appeal to the pledge of loyalty and 
service which He requires. For the youth who 
has wandered away from a childhood state of 
grace, all the Scripture which applies to the sinful 
soul and its need of repentance and regeneration 
is as applicable as to the adult. But the message 
of the Church must be in accord with the hearer’s 
vocabulary, and not in the shibboleths of mature 
theological conceptions. 

Of all the marvels of the day of Pentecost to the 
astonished multitudes none is more suggestive in its 
modern application than that referred to in the 
query, “ How hear we every man in our own 
tongue, wherein we were born ? ” The Pentecostal 
results for which the Church hopes can only be 
secured by the same method. The Church that 
to-day speaks the vernacular of youth is succeed¬ 
ing in making the Gospel plain to the hearts of the 
young. And Pentecost results are crowning such 
efforts. One great religious denomination reports 
that for the past ten years the number of acces¬ 
sions to membership from its Sunday schools has 
averaged enough to amount to over three thousand 
for every Sunday of each year! A veritable 
Pentecost of Divine power,—though without the 
accompaniment of the “ rushing of a mighty wind ” 
—yet with the same still, small voice and all-per¬ 
vading fire! 

The common tongue of youth is the language of 
activity. It manifests itself in a religious way in 



48 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


deeds of helpfulness,—in quiet services of the sort 
which do not let the left hand know what the right 
hand is doing. It also finds an outlet in romping 
games, athletics, and often in feverish endeavours 
to find an entertaining thrill after the manner not 
approved .by older and wiser folk. A church which 
accepts the social and recreational life as a part of 
youth’s natural existence has caught the accent of 
its speech, and will have little difficulty in impart¬ 
ing its other messages to the ears and hearts of 
the young. 

A veritable revolution has come to the Church 
in very recent years in regard to its interest in the 
physical and recreational side of young life. In 
conducting round-table discussions of the play 
question at various young people’s conventions I 
have used a questionnaire covering the church and 
community play life, in order to get a local view 
of the neighbourhoods from which the delegates 
came. The answers given to the question, “ Does 
your church, young people’s society, or Sunday 
school, interest themselves in athletics? ” formerly 
indicated quite a general lack of any church pro¬ 
vision for or interest in such sports. Only a few 
years have passed, and a change is now quite notice¬ 
able. Many churches are built with provision for 
gymnasium work and athletic events, and recrea¬ 
tion directors are now being employed in both city 
and country parishes. Where such facilities are 
not yet provided, play and athletics are finding their 
place in the church’s open air program during the 
favourable months of the year, and ministers are in 


IK THE LIFE OF TO-MOBBOW 


49 


demand who can carry out such activities for the 
youth of the community. 

The dedication of a new gymnasium in St. Paul’s 
Methodist Episcopal Church at Cedar Rapids, 
Iowa, is typical of the newly acknowledged connec¬ 
tion between the athletic life and practical Chris¬ 
tianity. In the dedication of the fine new church 
edifice it seemed fitting that some recognition of 
the connection of the gymnasium with the service 
activities of the church should be made, and the 
following beautiful and significant responsive 
service was used: 


“ For the entertainment of our children and youth 
in healthful games and sports under wholesome 
Christian influences, 

“We dedicate this gymnasium. 

“ For the development of strong bodies, clear 
brains, and clean morals, 

“ We dedicate this gymnasium. 

“ For the training of our young people to win 
victories without boasting, and to accept defeat with¬ 
out chagrin, 

“ We dedicate this gymnasium. 

“ For the training of our young people in self-con¬ 
trol, in cooperation, in team work, that in all life we 
may help one another, and be workers together with 
God, 

“ We dedicate this gymnasium. 

“ For the development of strong, healthy, cheerful, 
well-rounded, vigorous Christian lives, 

“ We dedicate this gymnasium. 

“ For the glory of God and the exalting of Jesus 
Christ in all the life of our young people, 

" We dedicate this gymnasium.” 


50 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


With the recreational life of the young thus 
dedicated to God, we shall not fear the separation 
of the play life from the things ordinarily counted 
serious and religious. The church that thus as¬ 
sociates the life of play with the life of piety cannot 
help being attractive to youth. With the interest 
in play, however, must come a serious endeavour 
to fill our place as teachers of the elements of per¬ 
sonal religious faith. The Bible class must not be 
neglected for the baseball field. Youth is not 
averse to learning, but rather eager for the truth. 
The Church has never had a clearer call to a teach¬ 
ing ministry than now. Doubtless the recognition 
of this need has caused the modem minister to 
change the style of his pulpit message to the direct 
and conversational address, rather than the orotund 
delivery so common a generation ago. 

The educational agencies which the Church em¬ 
ploys in carrying out its program of training were 
never more varied than now. The multiplicity of 
organizations and plans is our great danger. In 
the preparation of the menu for the satisfaction 
of the moral palate of youth, there are sometimes 
so many cooks in the kitchens that they tread upon 
each other. A prominent young people’s leader 
in the Methodist Church notes that there are 
thirteen different organizations in that church 
each with a program of missionary instruction for 
the children and youth from eight to twenty-five 
years of age. In the event of such overlapping 
endeavours it will be necessary to limit the educa¬ 
tional program of the average church to a very 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


61 


few of the organized agencies, and see that their 
fields of service cover the needs of the youth with¬ 
out duplication of effort. 

The Sunday school has long held an honoured 
place in the Church’s work for youth. With the 
new plans of departmental organization, systemati¬ 
cally graded courses, and trained teaching force, 
the church school has entered on a new era of re¬ 
ligious usefulness. The young people’s society, 
with its splendid program of worship and service 
activities has large possibilities for the training of 
the Christian life of youth. Missionary organiza¬ 
tions—though confining their endeavours too 
largely to the female sex—are contributing to a 
more social type of Christianity. Various clubs, 
tribes, and troops, semi-religious in character, fill 
a real need in the life of the intermediate boy and 
girl. With unified leadership on the part of the 
local church, and a division of fields of service, 
all may become parts of a system of training which 
shall give a well-rounded character to the coming 
Christian generation. 

Whatever its organized activities for youth may 
be, the Church will not fulfill its place as a moral 
and religious educational agency if it makes use 
of such agencies in a mechanical or passive way. 
All ideas of educational effort which represent the 
educator as a well-filled tank and the pupil as an 
empty bucket, with the organization or program as 
an animated pump handle, are inefficient and false. 
The young person demands that he shall have a 
part in the process ; and real education—in re- 


52 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


ligion and morals, as well as in secular subjects— 
is a process of bringing out, rather than pouring 
in. The youth must find in his teacher a director, 
rather than a dictator. The churches that allow 
and encourage their young people to an active par¬ 
ticipation in the work of the church find a steady 
growth and development on the part of the youth. 
Let us learn from our public schools in these mat¬ 
ters, where debating teams, athletic events, etc., 
are strictly student endeavours. When the young 
people’s society is of and for and by young people, 
it will prosper better than if it be “ young ” in name 
only. Young people grow by that stretch of soul 
or sinew which comes from taking up tasks which 
belong to the life in which they seek to develop. 

With the provision of a church program for our 
youth that is comprehensive enough to afford all¬ 
round development, there will come—and it has 
already begun to appear—a new type of Christian 
life. It may not express its experiences in the 
cherished phrases of former days; it may not be as 
dogmatic about some matters of theological for¬ 
mula; it will not be quite as emotional as some of 
the religious life of yesterday, but like the faith of 
the fathers it will have deep purposes, holy zeal, 
warm hearts, and willing hands, and the world will 
believe in it because it will remind them of the 
Master who has inspired His Church to proclaim 
it in these days. 

A beautiful tribute to such a life was given by 
the father of Richard Fearing Dawes, when the 
young man met an untimely death at Lake Geneva, 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


53 


a few years ago. After summing up his devotion 
to his comrades in an engineering camp where all 
were stricken with malignant typhoid fever, and 
telling how the boy came home to fight his way 
back to health again, the father describes his son’s 
liberal provision from his Christmas money for the 
necessities of twenty poor families, delivering the 
baskets to their homes himself; and, going on with 
the fond and beautiful recollections, he says: 

“ He commenced early in life to set himself against 
the crowd, for no man rises to real prestige who fol¬ 
lows it. Of bis own initiative he joined the church. 
For a long time he taught a Bible class of boys at 
Bethesda mission. He did not smoke, or swear, nor 
drink. He was absolutely clean. Yet in his stern 
opposition to the drift, he mingled tolerance in just 
that quality which contributed to real power to be 
used in opposition, and for that purpose alone. He 
organized systematically rescue squads for weaker 
boys at college who were wavering before strong but 
evil leadership. Against the boys who sought to lead 
astray the weaker he set his face like steel. Like 
every born leader he had his many warm friends, but 
if he ever had a bitter enemy I have yet to hear of 
him. His kindness, sincerity and good humour dis¬ 
armed hatred. I never saw him angry. In twenty- 
one years he never gave me just cause for serious 
reproach. 

“ My boy lived long enough to * win out/ What¬ 
ever the years would have added would be only 
material. In a man’s character is his real career. 

“ He died suddenly in the midst of happiness. He 
died with his high ideals unlowered. He died with 
all the noble illusions of a high minded youth un¬ 
disturbed and undispelled. He died without having 
lost ambition, with his eyes fixed upon the high 


64 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


mountains of life, where beyond question, had he 
lived, he would have climbed.” 

Thus in these brief extracts from the tender and 
affectionate tribute of Charles G. Dawes to his son 
do we gain a glimpse of Christianity in action in 
the life of a high-minded youth of to-day. 


IV 


THE HOME FACTOR IN ADOLESCENT 

RELIGION 


| ^HE testimony of religious leaders is unan¬ 
imous in giving a primary place to the 
home as the inspirer and builder of re¬ 
ligious life. The relation of the home to religious 
ideals is indicated in recollections of the ancient 
days when the father was the recognized high 
priest of his own household. It is foreshadowed 
in the blessing pronounced by Jehovah upon the 
first human pair in Eden, and in Christ’s first mani¬ 
festation of His glory at a wedding feast. Even 
to-day Christ brings His first blessings to mankind 
in the circle of the family life. 

In modern times so many foes prey upon the 
family that certain social prophets have arisen to 
tell us that the home as an institution is doomed. 
The increase of divorce, the tendency to late mar¬ 
riage, the many among the male portion of the 
race who because of choice or seeming financial 
compulsion remain single; the increased number of 
women whom a professional career, or the social 
usages of the times, have caused to walk the ways 
of single life,—all these conspire against the home. 
The unquestionable drift toward childlessness or a 
limited posterity—among those who do marry— 

55 


56 


THE YOTJTH OF TO-DAY 


has eliminated the large families of our fathers 
and left fewer to share the eulogy and inherit the 
blessing of the ancient psalmist—“ As arrows are 
in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of 
youth; happy is the man that hath his quiver full 
of them.” 

But we cannot believe that the family is a pass¬ 
ing institution of the social life, soon to die to 
make way for some superior plan of human living. 
A common dining hall and a system of civic child 
training cannot take the place of the family table 
and a mother’s care. Such experiments—even 
though attempted under the name of religion—have 
been destructive to human individuality and dis¬ 
appointing in practical results. The home has held, 
and will hold, through the ages to come the re¬ 
spect and reverence of the thousands who recog¬ 
nize their moral indebtedness to its sacred influence. 
A chaplain of the World War says in his record 
of experiences at the Front: 

“To speak of home to the soldier is to be assured 
of an immediate response. Over and over again I 
have seen the eyes of the soldiers in the hospitals 
brim over and their faces glow with smiles of delight 
and pride when I have spoken to them of parents, 
wife and children. Family photographs are erected 
into shrines of worship at the bedside of the 
wounded. ... I have a feeling that the influence 
of the home upon the soldier has not been sufficiently 
stressed. It was his sheet anchor, and the powerful 
magnet which irresistibly drew him back to his native 
land. It would be safe to say that as an influence it 
affected the life and purpose of the average soldier 
more than the Church.” 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


57 


Important as the relation of men and women in 
the married life is to each other, the most delicate 
relation which the home sustains is its religious 
responsibility to the children of the family circle. 
As conceptions of moral duty increase, parenthood 
is found to be no lessening task. How to be a 
good parent is a tremendously greater job than 
how to be a good son or daughter. 

We are familiar with the type of parent who 
assumed that the chief task in the raising of the 
child was the securing of obedience—no matter 
how it was secured. His chief dependence was 
the application of the rod—after the rule of 
Solomon. We are living in the generation of the 
sons and daughters of many such parents, who, 
though misguided, were as sincere in their belief 
as Mrs. Means of the Indiana backwoods, who said, 
“ lickin’ and lamin’ go together.” But many 
modern and more thoughtful folks have been in¬ 
clined to feel that neither Solomon nor those who 
followed to the full his suggestion have made a 
great success of their parental task. Too many of 
the present generation—like Rehoboam, the son of 
Israel’s famous king,—are even willing to rend a 
kingdom that they may gain some selfish end. 

The clashes concerning life’s problems which 
often result in an insurrection against parental 
authority, are most frequent in the dawning of 
adolescence. The child is coming out into the self- 
determining spirit of manhood; the spirit of in¬ 
dependence is developing, without which individ¬ 
uality is impossible and democracies cannot exist 


58 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Unfortunately this spirit of independence out¬ 
grows the spirit of wisdom, and the purposes of 
life probably need more careful guidance than at 
any other period. The wise parent will not at¬ 
tempt however to use the same authoritative man¬ 
ner with the boy of fifteen which he used five years 
before, for even experience will teach him that 
there is a wide difference in the child of the pre¬ 
adolescent period and the one who has entered the 
years of youth. 

It is in this period of peculiar restlessness and 
budding self-determination that the son or daughter 
is often thrown from the track of moral rectitude 
by an arbitrary spirit on the part of the parent. 
There is here the largest chance of the whole life¬ 
time for alienations between age and youth from 
misunderstandings which will appear trivial to both 
parent and child in the light of after years. 
Mothers are usually quicker to sense this fact than 
fathers, hence the wandering prodigal tells an 
almost universal story of a father’s sternness and 
the contrasting gentleness of a mother’s love. Of 
the attitude of a mother to her son in this period, 
the mother of Phillips Brooks said: 

“ There is an age when it is not well to follow or 
question your boy too closely. Up to that time you 
may carefully instruct and direct him; you are his 
best friend; he is never happy until the story of the 
day has been told; you must hear about his friends, 
his school, all that interests him must be your in¬ 
terest. Suddenly these confidences cease; the affec¬ 
tionate son becomes reserved and silent, he seeks the 
intimate friendship of other lads; he goes out, he is 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


59 


averse to telling where he is going or how long he will 
be gone. He comes in and goes silently to his 
room. . . . 

“ The period of which I speak appears to me to 
be the one in which the boy dies and the man is born; 
his individuality rises up before him, and he is dazed 
and almost overwhelmed by his first consciousness of 
himself. I have always believed that it was then that 
the Creator was speaking with my sons, and that it 
was good for their souls to be left alone with Him, 
while I, their mother, stood trembling, praying and 
waiting, knowing that when the man was developed 
from the boy I should have my sons again, and there 
would be a deeper sympathy than ever between us.” 

Whenever this parental care has not existed in 
somewhat of the degree indicated by this wise 
mother, it has often happened that a sense of 
estrangement has ensued and the child has been 
driven away from that close fellowship which is 
the ideal relation between parent and child. With 
such a rupture of affection the opportunity of the 
home for the religious nurture of the child is 
practically destroyed. 

The disruption of home ties so liable to occur 
has sent many a boy into the world to wander as a 
prodigal. An instructive study of the runaway 
boy is furnished by the tabulation of the cases of 
one hundred and seventeen wandering boys issued 
by the Chicago Bureau of Charities. The lads 
ranged in years from ten to nineteen years—only 
eleven being below the age of fourteen. Sixty- 
three were runaways—thirty-one of whom came 
from good homes. But of the total number it was 


60 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


discovered that half of them came from homes 
where one or the other of the parents were dead. 
These fragmentary homes—with their abnormal 
conditions—doubtless did much to produce that 
dissatisfaction which resulted in the boys yielding 
to the wandering disposition. 

These sorrowful cases of the severing of home 
ties by distrust, disagreement, or death, are paral¬ 
lelled in their regretful condition by instances of 
spiritually disrupted families living under the same 
roof, but not of the same heart and soul. Such 
occurrences are not infrequent, and it is not always 
the wife and husband who are at variance, but 
frequently the spiritual discord is found between 
father and son or mother and daughter. And 
sometimes it is the parent who is as much or more 
to blame for a disruption of interests that prevents 
family religion from being operative. In a rather 
unique “ parable ” a recent writer sets forth this 
condition: 

“ A certain man had two sons: and the younger of 
them said to his father, * Father, give me the portion 
of thy time, and thy attention, and thy companion¬ 
ship, and thy counsel which falleth unto me/ And 
he divided unto him his living, in that he paid the 
boy’s bills, and sent him to college, and tried to be¬ 
lieve that he was doing his full duty. 

“ And not many days after, the father gathered all 
his interests and ambitions and aspirations and took 
his journey into a far country—a land of stocks and 
bonds and securities—and there he wasted his 
opportunity of being a chum to his own son. And 
;when he had spent the very best of his life and had 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


61 


gained money but failed to find satisfaction, there 
arose a mighty famine in his heart, and he began to 
be in want of sympathy and real companionship. 
And he went and joined himself to one of the clubs 
of that country; and they elected him chairman of 
the house committee, and he would fain have satis¬ 
fied himself with the husks that other men did eat; 
and no man gave unto him any real friendship. 

“ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many 
men of my acquaintance have boys whom they under¬ 
stand, . . . and seem perfectly happy in the com¬ 

radeship of their sons, and I perish here with heart 
hunger! I will arise and go to my son, and will say 
unto him, ‘ Son, I have sinned against heaven and 
in thy sight: I am no more worthy to be called thy 
father: make me as one of thine acquaintances/ 
And he arose and came to his son. But while he 
was yet afar off, his son saw him, and was moved 
with astonishment, and he drew back and was ill at 
ease. And the father said unto him, * Son, I have 
sinned against heaven and in thy sight: I am no more 
worthy to be called thy father: forgive me now, and 
let me be your friend/ 

“ But the son said, * Not so; . . . it is too late. 
There was a time when I wanted to know things, and 
when I wanted companionship and counsel, but you 
were too busy. I got the information, and I got the 
companionship; but I got the wrong kind; and now, 
alas! there is nothing you can do for me. It is too 
late, too late, too late/’ 

The mutual obligation of parents and children 
to make home a livable place,—the best spot on 
earth for character development,—will take cog¬ 
nizance of the fact that religion must be taught 
by the home atmosphere as well as by formal 
practices. We have heard a great deal from the 


62 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


pulpit and the religious press regarding the need 
of the family altar, and many regrets are expressed 
because of the disappearance of the time-honoured 
custom of family prayer. We can sympathize 
with these expressions, but it were vain to think 
that the mere observance of a formal time of 
prayer at morning or evening can atone for a 
general religious carelessness throughout the day. 

The young people of the home will be more 
quickly impressed with the suggestions of religion 
which are placed around about them than by the 
didactic teaching of a set religious program. The 
high importance of the spiritual,—as against the 
merely intellectual or grossly material,—in deal¬ 
ing with the youth, is thus expressed by Emerson: 
“ In my dealing with my child, my Latin and my 
Greek, my accomplishments and my money, stead 
me nothing, but as much soul as I have avails.” 
“ Nurture by atmosphere,” as it is called by Patter¬ 
son DuBois, deserves more consideration in the 
thought of teachers and parents than it is commonly 
given. The suggestions of the religious life con¬ 
veyed by pictures, music, and literature, are as 
potent forces for good as the spoken word of the 
teacher. The Christian home should be full of 
such silent suggestions concerning the good and 
true. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, the noted English 
divine, says that when he was a young man, just 
married, his father said to him, “ Let there be not 
a single room in your new home that does not 
contain something which shall suggest your devo¬ 
tion to your Lord,—some picture or book or silent 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOBKOW 


63 


testimonial which shall say to every guest of your 
home, * This house is consecrated to the Christ 
whom I serve/ ” The spirit of such a home, where 
religion is a matter of daily living, is reflected in a 
simple poem of anonymous origin: 

“If every home were an altar, 

Where holiest vows were paid, 

And life’s best gifts in sacrament 
Of purest love were laid; 

“If every home were an altar, 

Where harsh or angry thought 
Was cast aside for kindly one, 

And true forgiveness sought; 

“If every home were an altar, 

Where hearts weighed down with care 
Could find sustaining strength and grace 
In sweet uplift of prayer— 

“ Then solved would be earth’s problems, 
Banished sin’s curse and blight; 

For God’s own love would radiate 
From every altar light.” 

Although so much has been said concerning the 
religious spirit of the home we do not wish to dep¬ 
recate the value of more formal religious teach¬ 
ing. The observance of some form of worship 
has a great moral and spiritual influence on all the 
inhabitants of the home. Its educational value is 
by no means to be considered lightly. A Sunday- 
school teacher congratulated a young man in her 
class on his acquaintance with the Scriptures. He 
said, “ Probably I do not deserve much credit for 


64 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


what I know about the Bible. It is not through 
my own study of the book, but because I have 
heard my father read it every day at family 
prayers that I have learned so much of it.” 

A pastor marked the religious indifference of a 
certain son and daughter of a couple who were old 
parishioners of his. For a good many years he had 
watched their course with concern and prayer, but 
was never able to get at the secret of their religious 
apathy until he visited for the last time the mother 
of these young people. She was then old and en¬ 
feebled and about to depart for the other world, 
where her husband had sometime before preceded 
her. The pastor expressed his deep concern for 
the grown children of the family, and the mother 
replied sadly, “ I have always dated the change of 
the religious attitude of my children from the 
morning when their father announced at the break¬ 
fast table that thereafter there would be no more 
family worship in the home.” It was the religious 
indifference of the parent that had resulted in the 
destruction of youthful religious faith. 

Associated with the old-time family altar the 
custom of returning thanks at meals was an almost 
invariable practice of the religious home. It is 
probable that this has not been so generally aban¬ 
doned as the more formal prayers with Scripture 
reading accompaniment. As a respectful and 
decent remembrance of the Divine care, and a 
suggestion that is calculated to set the table con¬ 
versation on a high level it performs an important 
ethical service. But it will not do for the head of 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


65 


the house to mumble a formal grace before meals 
and follow it with bitter remarks of criticism re¬ 
garding the character of the food served, lest the 
young people of the home discover the wide 
divergence between a form of prayer and the 
practice of Christian virtues. 

It would be interesting to know to what degree 
young people are participating in family worship 
at the present time. Some parents make participa¬ 
tion easy by providing each child with a Bible that 
the lesson may be read verse about; others close 
the prayer of the morning with the Lord’s Prayer 
in which all may join. Among primary and junior 
children the participation in audible prayer is not 
difficult to secure, but during the reticent age of 
youth the parent may discover an unwillingness to 
formulate a prayer, even in homes where it has 
been previously a frequent practice. It is well not 
to force such a performance, but give nature and 
grace time to work out the peculiar problem of 
adolescence, and wait for that developing of mature 
religious expression which is certain to come if 
proper education and environment are provided by 
the home and the Church. 

Some organized effort has been made for the 
restoration of these customs of home religious life. 
The Family Altar League, with a headquarters at 
Chicago, solicits the signing of pledges and regis¬ 
ters the names of parents who will enroll their 
homes as houses of prayer. Various church 
papers publish selected lists of Scripture readings 
appropriate for family worship, and a number of 


66 


THE YOUTH OF TO DAY 


choice books are prepared with both Scripture 
selections and forms of prayer for family use. 

The family circle of prayer as well as the family 
table often affords a chance for the practical teach¬ 
ing of the social element which belongs to the full- 
orbed religious life. The presence of a guest at 
the family table,—the leading of family prayers by 
a visiting minister,—these are reminders of the 
association of the family with the greater family 
of God’s people everywhere. The contribution of 
the guest to the religious and social life of our 
children is too beneficial an influence to be omitted 
from the home life. In these days when the 
delegates even to Christian conventions are wel¬ 
comed “ to our hearts and our hotels ” as one face¬ 
tious speaker jokingly said at a great convention, 
we are in danger of losing the spirit of Christian 
hospitality which meant so much to our fathers 
and to us their children. An aged lady,—a Pres¬ 
byterian minister’s wife—was asked how she suc¬ 
ceeded in raising such a fine family of children, 
whose devotion to the Church was so manifestly a 
part of their lives. She said, “ I count that one 
of the spiritual advantages which was not the least 
in their development was the character of the 
guests we have had in our homes through the 
years. The missionaries and ministers and Chris¬ 
tian laymen who have tarried with us have by their 
conversations and suggestions left an influence 
which has much assisted in setting high ideals be¬ 
fore our children.” 

The thought of inspiration must be central in 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MORROW 


67 


the child’s religious teaching in the home. The 
guest which produces awe instead of affection is 
not the ideal guest so far as youth is concerned. 
Personally, I can never feel myself quite in 
sympathy with a motto sometimes seen in Chris¬ 
tian homes: “ Christ is the Unseen Guest of this 
Home,” on which appear statements about the 
Master being present to hear every conversation, 
present at every meal, etc. To youth the idea of 
Christ as a police officer can never appeal. The 
text, “ Thou God seest me,” has often suggested to 
the child a man with an account book, writing 
down the misdeeds of naughty children. 

It is an excellent testimony to the character of 
ministers’ homes that so many have come from 
them who have done religious or social service of 
so much worth to the world. In the light of the 
facts that have been repeatedly presented the old 
idea that ministers’ sons are morally below par, is 
an exploded notion. Of the first thirty-seven great 
men enrolled in the Hall of Fame in New York 
City seven are preacher’s sons. Ministers’ sons 
have held the office of president of the United 
States in the ratio of one out of every nine. An 
investigation made some years since of the names 
in “ Who’s Who in America,” showed that of the 
more than sixteen thousand names that appear 
eight hundred and ninety-eight are descendants of 
preachers. Of these there are one hundred and 
eighty-eight clergymen, including twenty-three 
bishops; one hundred and eighty educators; 
seventy-nine lawyers; ninety-seven authors; eighty- 


68 


THE YOTJTH OF TO-DAY 


two editors and journalists; seventy-four physi¬ 
cians and surgeons; and multitudes of others 
divided in smaller numbers between a variety of 
distinguished professions. 

That the sons and daughters of ministers have 
often followed them in effective ministerial and 
missionary work is well known. Recent statistics 
from the Methodist Church, South, show that one 
in every nine of their ministers was raised in a 
parsonage home. The Southern Presbyterians 
count one in every six of their ministerial force as 
the sons of clergymen. 

A considerable number of thoughtful folks still 
believe that the intellectual and moral endowments 
of parents are transmitted to their children along 
with their physical characteristics. The instance 
of the intellectual heritage of the twelve children 
of Lyman Beecher, the long line of talented musi¬ 
cians which the Bach family reveals through eight 
generations, as well as a large amount of other 
data, show that parentage has a large control over 
the destiny of the child. I have interested myself 
for some years in tracing the religious history of 
the fathers and mothers of large families, and 
noting the connection of that history with the re¬ 
ligious characteristics of the children. Quite fre¬ 
quently the older children are found to be faithful 
adherents of the Church, but as one comes down 
the line to the children of younger years indiffer¬ 
ence and religious apathy are manifest. On closer 
scrutiny I have found that the children born in a 
“ religious era ” of the family history had their 


69 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 

predilection to the things of religion. If the father 
and mother became more absorbed in the things of 
material life and thinking less of the spiritual, the 
children born to them had interests of the more 
material sort. Religious interest regained upon the 
part of the parents would again produce offspring 
with the social inheritance of faith. 

Paul, the apostle, seems to have indicated this 
inheritance of a bent toward the things of the 
Spirit, when—in writing to the young Timothy— 
he reminded his friend of “ the unfeigned faith 
that dwelt first in thy Grandmother Lois, and in 
thy Mother Eunice, and ... in thee also.” 
The child born under such favourable auspices and 
developed in the life of religion in a Christian 
home has an inheritance which is normal and right, 
and the serious acceptance of such a program for 
the parent and his offspring on the part of the 
Christian world would produce a new generation. 
Dr. Edward Everett Hale, speaking of the relig¬ 
ious struggles through which some have passed, 
says, “ Any man has an advantage not to be esti¬ 
mated, who is born, as I was, into a family where 
the religion is simple and rational; who is trained 
in the theory of such a religion, so that he never 
knows for an hour what these religious or irrelig¬ 
ious struggles are. I always knew God loved me, 
and I was always grateful to Him for the world 
He placed me in. I always liked to tell Him so, 
and was glad to receive His suggestions to me.” 


V 


THE RELIGIOUS PERVERSITIES 
OF YOUTH 

SUPERFICIAL observer of child life is 



often puzzled when face to face with the 


X JL. moral perversities of youth,—especially if 
the spiritually wayward be the descendants of good 
parents. A common way of accounting for such 
dispositions and sinful outcroppings used to be 
that they were but the natural result of human de¬ 
pravity. We still believe in the influences of hered¬ 
ity, but since the more scientific methods of child 
study have prevailed, we do not attempt to give the 
law of inheritance more to bear than its share, and 
in addition to the natural legacies with which the 
child is endowed we are finding to-day many other 
causes why these are born blind, or have had their 
spiritual blindness thrust upon them. 

Although we do not to-day associate the thought 
of deficient moral inheritances with the sin of our 
parents in the manner of ancient theologians, we 
still recognize the fact that the disposition of the 
parent affects the life start of the child as truly in 
the moral and spiritual realm as well as in physical 
manifestations, or mental capabilities. It seems to 
be true that some children are born almost without 
moral inclinations, while others are filled with 


THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


71 


spiritual wisdom from the earliest moments of 
their lives. 

If in these hereditary tendencies there is a fore¬ 
shadowing of the character of the youth, may we 
not see that some of the waywardness of young 
people is due to the “ sour-grape ” legacies which 
are theirs. Even the youthful folly of the 
“ wanderlust ” has been traced to ancestral inheri¬ 
tances, and sometimes to nearer progenitors, rather 
than to the nomadic tastes of prehistoric men. A 
man of peculiar literary ability, but with the char¬ 
acter of a confirmed vagabond,—known as “ Josiah 
Flynt,”—whose life story was published in the 
magazines a number of years ago, says concerning 
his wandering habits, “ The call of die feme, as the 
Germans call it, . . . was my trouble from 

almost babyhood. It was from my mother,—as I 
have learned from what she has told me in later 
years,—I probably got some of my wandering 
proclivities. There was a time in her life, I have 
heard her say, when the mere distant whistle of a 
railroad train would set her ‘ go ’ instincts tingling, 
and only a sense of duty and fine control of self 
held her back.” Josiah Flint Willard, as his real 
name was, born of the best ancestry and highly en¬ 
dowed by nature in so many particulars, had the 
disposition of a hobo, and became a vagabond be¬ 
cause of an inner impulsion of which he says, 
“ The longing to go would come upon me without 
warning in the dead of the night, sometimes under 
varying disguises as the years went by.” Thus he 
roamed through the world, and died while still a 


72 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


young man—suddenly stricken in a Chicago hotel. 
His farewell words to the physician who came to 
minister to him in his last moments were, “ I have 
been a wanderer on earth, and in eternity my soul 
will wander on.” 

Not alone by an unfavourable inheritance has the 
youth been deprived of his opportunity of moral 
excellence. As education and training have unques¬ 
tioned power to change or overcome inherited 
faults of disposition, and build the individual into 
a symmetrical being, so they may also distort or 
wreck a human personality. Even an educational 
program which has in view the highest good of the 
individual may—through misapplication, or over- 
zealous application,—defeat the object sought. 
Who does not know some mature individual—per¬ 
haps a number of them—whose moral and religious 
indifference or antipathy to Christianity can be 
traced to this very cause ? Though there are many 
excellent things to be said concerning the strict 
moral regimen which was common in religious 
homes in this country’s beginnings, it must be said 
that it often brought a revulsion of feelings which 
resulted in turning the child from the things of 
religion or else from the commonly accepted ortho¬ 
dox standards. The Rev. John Murray, founder 
of American Universalism, gives us a picture of 
his father’s strict observance of the Sabbath day 
in his early home, which he prefaces by saying that 
his father “ made the Sabbath a day much to be 
dreaded in our family.” The program of the day 
is then given, as follows: 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


73 


“We were all awakened at early morn, private 
devotions attended, breakfast hastily dismissed, 
shutters closed, no light but from the "back part of 
the house; no noise could bring any part of the family 
to the window; not a syllable was uttered upon 
secular affairs; every one who could read, children 
and domestics, had their allotted chapters. Family 
prayers succeeded, after which ‘ Baxter’s Saint’s 
Everlasting Rest,’ was assigned to me, my mother 
all the time in terror lest the children should be an 
interruption. At last the bell summoned us to 
church, whither in solemn order we proceeded, I 
close to my father, who admonished me to look 
straight forward and not let my eyes wander after 
vanities. At church I was fixed at his elbow, com¬ 
pelled to kneel when he kneeled, to stand when he 
stood, to find the psalm, epistle, gospel, and collects 
for the day, and every instance of inattention was 
vigilantly marked and unrelentingly punished. When 
I returned from the church I was ordered to my 
closet, and when I came forth the chapter from which 
the preacher had taken his text was read, and I was 
questioned respecting the sermon, a part of which I 
could generally repeat. Dinner, as breakfast, was 
taken in silent haste, after which we were not suffered 
to walk, even in the garden, but every one must 
either read or hear reading until the bell gave the 
signal for the afternoon service, from which we re¬ 
turned to private devotion, to reading, to catechising, 
to examination, and a long family prayer, which 
closed the most laborious day of the week.” 

The distaste for religion that often attacks the 
adolescent is sometimes traceable to an unnatural 
and extreme standard which his elders seek to force 
upon him. Swinging to the opposite extreme the 
youth plunges into excesses of religious rebellion 



74 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


which are appalling to parents and teachers. A 
minister’s daughter, who had been most carefully 
raised, told me that when she was a young girl 
she would “ leave the house,” and, going behind 
the barn, “ say all the bad words and unladylike 
things ” she could think of,—as an outlet to the 
moral tension under which she was so constantly 
kept. 

When such manifestations of religious insub¬ 
ordination are upon the youth his elders often be¬ 
come intensely pessimistic regarding the moral out¬ 
look, not only of the individual, but of the coming 
generation as a whole. For many years it has 
been common to hear certain anxious souls declare 
that “ young people are not the same now as they 
were when I was young.” But the truth is that 
the facts do not always bear out the implication 
that the youth of years agone were ideal in their 
behaviour. Some one has preserved for us an ex¬ 
tract from the diary of Louisa Gurney, a young 
Quakeress who wrote the record about one hundred 
and thirty-five years ago. The mischievous girl 
says: “ I was in a very playing mood to-day and 
thoroughly enjoyed being foolish, and tried to be 
as rude to everybody as I could. We went on the 
highroad for the purpose of being rude to the folks 
that passed. I do think that being rude is most 
pleasant sometimes.” 

The Church as well as the home has in certain 
instances been too severe when the youth has 
failed to measure up to an exact standard. In the 
effort to suppress dangerous deviations from moral 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MORROW 


75 


behaviour or theological beliefs it has sometimes 
erred to the spiritual detriment of a young life. 
The sister of Charles Bradlaugh tells an interest¬ 
ing story of her brother’s departure from the 
Church and Christian faith. Young Bradlaugh 
had his early education in the Church of England, 
and was making such progress in religious matters 
that at the age of fourteen he was a teacher in the 
Sunday school. The pastor of the church selected 
some of the most promising boys of the congrega¬ 
tion for a confirmation class and among them was 
Charles Bradlaugh. As a preparation for his recep¬ 
tion into the Church he was given the thirty-nine 
articles of the Church to study. The youth made 
a careful comparison of them with the Gospels, and 
believing that they did not agree with the Scriptures 
he wrote the pastor—Mr. Packer—asking for in¬ 
formation on the points in question. The pastor, 
considering that such questionings were heresy and 
unbelief, suspended the boy from his class for three 
months and wrote a letter to Charles’s father de¬ 
nouncing his son’s inquiries as atheistical in char¬ 
acter. He further caused the father to place upon 
the wall of the boy’s room the motto, “ The fool 
hath said in his heart there is no God,” as a con¬ 
stant reproof to his questioning of the creed of the 
Church. The enthusiastic rector further persuaded 
his employer to dismiss him from his place of 
labour unless he would promise to give up his 
heretical notions. Thus, at the age of sixteen 
Bradlaugh was dismissed and faced the world 
penniless, while his only associates in religious 


76 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


study were a band of “ freethinkers ” in Bonner’s 
Fields. Through the ignorance of a supposed ser¬ 
vant of the Master there was lost to the Church 
one who might have been a strong exponent of 
spiritual truth, while anti-Christian forces gained 
a brilliant advocate. And it was all because the 
doubts and questionings of an adolescent boy did 
not meet with some explanation and answer from 
those who should have given him religious nurture 
and counsel. 

The tendency to doubt and skepticism which is 
a usual accompaniment of the adolescent period is 
no doubt fostered in some degree by the scientific 
studies taken up during this age. In the junior 
years certain Bible stories have been accepted with¬ 
out question,—with little consideration whether 
the statements were to be taken literally or not. 
But as the older years come, the youth will ask 
himself the question, “ Are these things to be taken 
as historical truth ? ” The creation account of the 
book of Genesis and the statements of his school 
text-books will come up for comparison and the un¬ 
questioning faith of childhood will not fit his need 
at this time. Statements of the Old Testament 
which assert that God commanded His people to 
slaughter every living creature—even innocent 
children and defenseless women—in their conquest 
of the land of Canaan, will stand side by side in 
his thought with the reported commands of the 
Kaiser to his soldiers in their invasion of Belgium. 
Little wonder if the youth shall seriously question 
his former ideas of Scripture interpretation. 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORKOW 


77 


It will not do for the religious teacher to dodge 
or equivocate when faced with such mental and 
spiritual problems. They are infinitely more vital 
to youth than they will appear in the after years of 
manhood, and they must be treated seriously. I 
cannot think that the successful leader of the young 
will ever deal with the thought of this conflict 
between the scientific spirit and certain ancient 
theories of Biblical inspiration with either intol¬ 
erance or flippancy. The teacher must emphasize 
the thought of the value of the spiritual truth in 
the Bible stories, and show that the truth was 
presented through human channels, and men with 
these human limitations expressed truth only in 
accord with the thought and ideas of their own 
times. The Bible must be considered not as an 
authority upon scientific subjects, but as a revela¬ 
tion of God to men. If the Biblical writers had 
been miraculously guided so as to have correctly 
stated the yet undiscovered facts of astronomy, 
geology, and biology, such exactness would have 
made their messages ill-adapted to the people for 
whom they were written, and no more valuable 
to us to-day as a spiritual message. The youth 
must be shown that the inspiration of the Bible 
pertains to its religious message,—its presentation 
of God and His dealings with men. Even here the 
teacher must make plain that the Old Testament 
must be considered in the light of the New Testa¬ 
ment age, and ideas of God which do not accord 
with the spirit of Christ, in whom “ dwelleth all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily/' must be con- 


78 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


sidered as human, and thus imperfect, presentations 
of the Divine One. Neither the teacher of the 
young nor the youth himself has any need to be 
afraid of the truth—which, no matter where it is 
found, has the stamp of the Divine upon it. 
Neither should we fear for our modern Thomas, 
who—though misnamed a skeptic—when given a 
clear revelation of Him who is the embodiment of 
truth will joyfully acclaim Him,—“ My Lord and 
my God! ” 

The spirit of doubt and questioning which ac¬ 
companies the adolescent years often associates 
itself with the relations of young people with their 
parents. An unwillingness to listen to advice, and 
even a distrust of their superiors, is as prominently 
displayed as infidelity in matters of religion. An 
incident comes to mind of a young girl whom I 
once knew who was pursued by the thought that 
she was an adopted child. Of the five children in 
the family she was the only one with light hair, 
though otherwise in face and form resembling her 
mother. Obsessed in some strange way that she 
was not one of the family she charged her parents 
with having adopted her when she was a babe. 
Her oldest brother, with the desire to tease her, 
assented to her belief,—saying that he remembered 
perfectly well when she was brought as a little 
babe to the home! The protestations of the par¬ 
ents, and their sorrow over the strange hallucina¬ 
tion, could only with the utmost difficulty persuade 
their unhappy and mistaken child that she was their 
own daughter. 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


79 


This incident is not so pathetic as that alienation 
of the child from its Heavenly Father which may 
take place by an indiscreet method of meeting the 
perversities of this period of youth. Because of 
an exceedingly painful experience on the part of 
the writer, when his own path of religious belief 
and service separated from that of his father, he 
has a keen appreciation of the heart throes which 
both the parent and child may suffer at such times. 
Such unhappy separations are often caused by the 
effort on the part of the parent to predetermine the 
details of a Christian life for the child. Many 
adults are pleased with the religious precocity of 
children and are surprised when in after years the 
child casts off this predetermined faith and asserts 
the right to think for himself. A peculiarly in¬ 
teresting story of such a religious experience is that 
which is told by Edward Gosse, in “ Father and 
Son, a Study of Two Temperaments.” He tells 
of his careful training under the watchful eyes of 
his father and mother, by whom he had been 
dedicated in infancy to Christian service. His 
father was a very zealous minister of a peculiar 
religious sect, who, having carefully instructed the 
boy, secured his baptism and admittance “ as an 
adult ” into the company of the brethren at the 
early age of ten years. After a somewhat Phar¬ 
isaical religious life during childhood’s years, the 
boy came into youth’s fuller estate;—his mother 
having died in the meantime, leaving him as a 
sacred charge to the father to bring up in the ways 
of the faith. The son’s departure from home and 


80 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


the years of school followed. The faith of 
his childhood was found too small a craft in 
which to sail manhood’s larger ocean, and changes 
of manner and lessened fervency of religious ex¬ 
pression brought sorrow to the old man’s heart. 
Letters of inquiry and questions probing the inner 
life of his favourite son followed, and the breach 
finally came after a visit to the home and a face 
to face interview. The son then received a letter 
from the father expressing his disappointment and 
sorrow,—to which the boy replied in as tender a 
vein as possible and confessed in full his changed 
religious faith. The event was a sorrowful one to 
the son, and the father was stricken as with a 
fatal blow. The son’s departure from the faith of 
his father is thus characterized in the closing words 
of this interesting study: “A case of Everything 
or Nothing; and thus deliberately challenged, the 
young man’s conscience threw off once for all the 
yoke of his ‘ dedication,’ and as respectfully as he 
could, without pride or remonstrance, he took a 
human being’s privilege to fashion his inner life for 
himself.” 

The spiritual tragedy revealed in this life story 
was a result of the mistaken attempt of a father 
to secure a mature type of religious experience in 
his son, and the natural rebellion of a youth in 
the critically frank years of adolescence which 
swung him to the far extreme—perhaps to a com¬ 
plete departure from the Christian faith. The 
overzealous parent was not willing to allow his 
child the privilege which St. Paul accorded to 


IK THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


81 


childhood, “ when I was a child I thought as a 
child.” 

The writer confesses here to a mistake in his 
early dealing with children, in that he too often put 
a high value on the demonstrative conversion and 
religious manifestations of the precociously relig¬ 
ious child. A deeper understanding of the nature 
of the child has led him to conclude that the child 
who is precocious in religious life is abnormal, and 
that such forced maturity is not a safe type of 
Christian life. In spiritual life as well as in nature 
we must have “ first the blade, then the ear, then 
the full grain in the ear.” 

An instance of the reaction from an overstressed 
religious exercise in childhood was presented while 
assisting in revival work in an Iowa town some 
years ago. I was entertained in the home of the 
pastor, an elderly gentleman of the highest type of 
piety who manifested much concern over the 
spiritual condition of his son, a young man of 
dissipated habits. The parents told me how in 
childhood he had been a most exemplary Christian, 
having had a very bright conversion. When but 
twelve years of age he led the young people's meet¬ 
ing, astonishing them all by his clear expression of 
religious thought. His address was published in 
the city paper. But now all was different, and he 
was far away from Christ and the Church. A 
little study of home conditions cast a side light on 
the story at this time. The minister's little girl in 
very gladness had run down the walk to meet her 
mother who was coming home from the city. As 


82 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


she skipped along with a happy laugh, the mother 
sternly reproved her for her demonstrations, say¬ 
ing, “ Be quiet now, and act like a lady! ” It was 
the same old story—the attempt to put an old 
head and a mature heart life into the child and the 
youth. 

Through the efforts of the evangelist—my co¬ 
worker—the message of a personal religious life 
was brought home to the wandering son, and one 
night Fred came and very quietly gave his heart 
and life again to the Christ. It was not the same 
as in the days of boyhood, but it meant a facing 
again toward the better things of life. But how 
much better it would have been if his might have 
been a normal religious life, without the interven¬ 
ing years of sin! The superiority of this normal 
type of religious life is impressed upon us by an 
incident relating the conversation between two 
Christian men. One, a man of mature years, had 
just been telling to a younger man the startling ex¬ 
perience through which he had passed,—his won¬ 
derful conversion to Christ after years of misspent 
life. His young friend said, when the story was 
finished, “ That is the most wonderful story I have 
ever heard! ” “ Yes,” said the narrator, “ it is won¬ 
derful; and I can only think of one thing that 
would have been more wonderful,—that is, that I 
might have lived so that it would never have had 
to take place.” 

The perversities of youth which have led so many 
into doubt and sin are better understood in the 
light of the natural struggles which attend the 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


83 


dawning of the independence which belongs to 
manhood. The human will, which in childhood 
has been a pliable and easily managed thing, be¬ 
comes difficult to subordinate when youth begins 
to assert his personality. His will cannot be 
broken, but it can be trained and educated. For 
our basis in training and teaching, the scope of 
Biblical material was never greater than now, and 
the opportunity for the rescue of the modern youth 
from the uncertainties of doubt and skepticism was 
never greater than in the present time. The com¬ 
bined testimony of educators and churchmen of the 
present day, the voices of the sages of old, and the 
tender love of our revered fathers and mothers,— 
all echo the heart’s longing for the truth which a 
modern hymnist has presented as a panacea for the 
errors of men: 

“ Teach us the truth in the Bible, 

Spirit of wisdom and light; 

Open Thy word to Thy children, 

Father of mercy and might. 

“ Open life’s vision before us; 

Show us the way we should take; 

Grant that the light of Thy counsel 
Over our spirits may break. 

“ Bring to us help from the Bible, 

Strength in our doubts and our fears; 
Comfort when sorrows o’erwhelm us, 

Hope when eternity nears. 

“ Show us the Christ of the Bible, 

Lover and helper of men, 

Speaking His words to His loved ones, 

Over and over again.” 


VI 


THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND THE 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 

BRIGHT boy among the third grade chil¬ 



dren in a certain Sunday school said one 


jl JL Sunday morning to his teacher, “ You 
have to go to the Catholic school if you want to 
learn about Jesus.” When his statements were 
questioned, he insisted, “ Yes, you do. In the 
Catholic school every day they have church and 
learn about Jesus. I know some kids who go over 
there, and I wish I could hear about Jesus every 
day, too. I go to this school,” pointing to the 
public school standing near the church, “ and we 
never learn anything about Jesus there. Why 
don’t they tell us about Jesus in our school? ” 

The criticism of this youngster regarding his 
school is in line with that wider expression of dis¬ 
satisfaction concerning the secular character of our 
public schools which is frequently heard. In the 
effort to avoid sectarian instruction and to be true 
to the American principle of the separation of 
Church and state, the public schools have elimi¬ 
nated religion itself and excluded definite moral 
ideals. Roman Catholic and Jewish prejudice, as 
well as the influence of smaller religious parties, 
together with atheistic opposition,—all these forces 


84 


THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


85 


have combined to hinder the reading of the Bible 
or the inculcation of religious truths in the public 
school, so that our school system is sometimes 
characterized as completely godless. 

We cannot believe that such a condition is in 
accordance with the best thought of educators of 
any note, nor in harmony with the spirit of true 
Americanism. The public school does not have to 
be so colourless regarding the principles of religion 
and morality as to have a weakened moral influ¬ 
ence, and the teacher need not be a veritable pagan 
in his character or his teaching. The safety and 
security of all social institutions demands that the 
young life of the nation shall have instruction in 
the fundamentals of religion and ethics as well as 
the knowledge of the common branches of the 
school curriculum. 

The statesmanship of the country has not been 
insensible to the relation that religion sustains to 
education, as many of the utterances of our 
national leaders indicate. In its early legislation 
providing for the government of the Northwest 
Territory, in 1787, Congress adopted an Act, the 
preamble of which reads: “ Religion, morality and 
knowledge being necessary to good government and 
the happiness of mankind, schools and means of 
education shall be forever encouraged.” The 
principle thus enunciated by our fathers has given 
the subject of public education an association with 
the things of religion and moral life in the minds 
of the best citizens of this country that is growing 
stronger than ever in recent years. 


86 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Educators and men of literary genius have not 
hesitated to declare the relation of religion and 
education. Ruskin said: “ Education does not 
mean teaching people what they do not know. It 
means teaching them to behave as they do not 
behave. It is not teaching the youth the shapes of 
letters and the tricks of numbers and then leaving 
them to turn their arithmetic to roguery and their 
literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, training 
them into the perfect exercise and kingly conti¬ 
nence of their bodies and souls.” It was William 
James who said: “ Education cannot be better de¬ 
scribed than by calling it the organization of 
acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to be¬ 
haviour.” The trend of such utterances,—many 
more of which might be given,—is all toward the 
thought that educational processes have to do with 
the deep springs of human behaviour, and that the 
educated person is not one simply stuffed with the 
knowledge of text-books, but rather one who is a 
student in the art of correct living. 

The attitude of our best educators is summed up 
in a resolution passed by the National Educational 
Association (1905) which asserts that “the ulti¬ 
mate object of popular education is to teach chil¬ 
dren to live righteously, healthily and happily, and 
that to accomplish this object it is essential that 
every school inculcate the love of truth, justice, 
purity and beauty, through the study of biography, 
history, ethics, natural history, music, drawing, and 
the manual arts. . . . The building of char¬ 

acter is the real aim of the schools, and the ultimate 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


87 


reason for the expenditure of millions for their 
maintenance.” The purpose partly outlined here 
found expression in somewhat clearer form when 
in 1915 the Association offered a prize of one 
thousand dollars for the best treatise on the subject 
of the place of religion in education which would 
provide a plan for introducing religion into the 
public schools. The general interest in the subject 
is shown by the fact that nearly fourteen hundred 
competitors entered for the contest, representing 
every state in the Union but one. The number of 
manuscripts submitted was four hundred and 
thirty-two. Five of these essays were published,— 
the winning one and four others of excellent 
worth. The plans were of a general character and 
aimed to furnish a basis for moral and religious 
training which might be acceptable alike to Prot¬ 
estant, Roman Catholic and Jew. 

Several years before this contest, Prof. Vernon 
P. Squires, of the University of North Dakota, 
presented to the Association a suggested course of 
Bible study for use in the high schools. This 
course, as an elective, has found a place in the 
public schools of North Dakota, and has been 
widely referred to as the “ North Dakota plan.” 
Generally speaking, the study of the Bible required 
in this course, which occupies two years, with 
weekly recitations, is taken at the churches in con¬ 
nection with the Sunday-school sessions. The 
text-book is the Bible, with the choice of the version 
employed left to the individual pupil. The plan 
was first put in operation in 1918. During the 


88 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


first four years of its operation six hundred and 
seventy-nine papers were sent up to the State Board 
of Education—which sent out the examination 
questions—and of these a total of six hundred and 
four received a passing grade, and these pupils were 
allowed a half unit of credit on their high school 
work. The papers submitted represented seventy- 
nine different towns. The plan seems to be suc¬ 
cessful, and State Superintendent E. J. Taylor said 
(1916), “ The plan has met with marked success. 
People of the various denominations are friendly 
toward the plan, and a number of students belong¬ 
ing to all the leading denominations take the ex¬ 
amination and receive credit.” 

As a result of a Bible study plan for college 
credit, adopted by the Teachers’ College of Greeley, 
Colorado, a state plan for high school Bible study, 
cooperating between the Church and the public 
school in that state, was worked out and put into 
operation in 1914. The Colorado plan provides 
for a four years’ course of study. More than six 
hundred students were enrolled in these classes 
during the first year, and one city—Fort Morgan— 
had fifty per cent of its high school students in 
Bible study. As in North Dakota the work is con¬ 
ducted outside of the school hours, under com¬ 
petent teachers, and usually during the Sunday- 
school period. Statements from educators who are 
associated with this work show an increasing num¬ 
ber of students in these Bible classes, and indicate 
that the plan is constantly growing in favour. 

The efforts for the correlation of the school and 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MORROW 


89 


the Church in systematic Bible study have reached 
out to other states so that in more or less degree 
similar plans are in operation in nearly a score of 
states in the Union. The new constitution of the 
state of Illinois contains a paragraph which says 
that the reading of the Bible in the public schools 
of the state shall never be forbidden. These en¬ 
couraging indications of the friendly attitude of 
educators and legislators are, we trust, but fore¬ 
gleams of that larger opportunity for Bible knowl¬ 
edge which the public schools of the future will 
afford to those whose training in this particular is 
now of the most fragmentary and unsatisfactory 
sort. 

The high quality of the literature of the Bible, 
as well as the lessons of ethical value, demand that 
the program of education shall not disregard its im¬ 
portance as a part of human culture. Dr. Lyman 
Abbott, speaking to a great church gathering, and 
contending for the use of the Bible in our public 
schools, said, “ I hope that my children, or at least, 
my grandchildren, will live to see the ecclesiastical 
prejudices on the one side and the skeptical prej¬ 
udices on the other give way, and the Bible,—the 
most inspiring book of all literature, ancient or 
modern,—taught in our public schools as the life, 
literature, and laws of a great people to whom and 
through whom has come the great moral and spir¬ 
itual message of the world’s redemption.” 

It must not be concluded because of the absence 
of the Bible from our curriculum of public school 
study that our schools are doing nothing in the 


90 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


formation of moral character. Where the char¬ 
acter of the teachers and the personnel of the school 
boards are favourable to religion, the schools are 
having a decidedly moral and religious atmosphere. 
With a better understanding of the opportunities 
of the teacher for the introduction of the ethical 
element into his instruction the public school 
teacher can certainly increase his effectiveness in 
this particular. There are lines of study now be¬ 
ing pursued in the regular high school course which 
are capable of inculcating the highest moral and 
religious lessons without any sectarian bias. Stories 
may be told and illustrations from daily life given 
which contain effective suggestions to the mind of 
youth, that will be better received than any didactic 
moral instruction. A great educational leader 
said, “ Show me a man who can teach astronomy, 
geology, biology or history without teaching re¬ 
ligion, and I will show you a man who can paint 
the pictures of George Inness without being an 
artist, or one who can write the verses of Brown¬ 
ing without being a poet.” Speaking of an old 
teacher of science he said, “ To hear him speak in 
inspired and trembling tones of the wonders of 
the human body or of the sidereal universe, without 
a thrill of wonder, love and praise, was as impos¬ 
sible as for a musician to hear the playing of Ole 
Bull without some trembling of the heart.” 

In the study of history and biography the 
teacher will have an excellent chance to magnify 
the high characteristics of loyalty and self-sacrifice, 
as well as enforce the truth of a Destiny that 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


91 


shapes even the ends of national life. The strug¬ 
gles for the abolishing of slavery in this country, 
and the present efforts for the securing of a “ dry ” 
nation, and eventually a temperate and sober world, 
are fraught with chances to inspire the heroic in¬ 
stincts that come only to full growth through 
religion. 

Youth loves the heroic. With the present effort 
of the world to get away from the obsession of 
militarism, it will be the work of the public schools 
to show the rising generation that there is a mili¬ 
tant opportunity for them in the battle against the 
evils of society. Years ago a young man sat in 
the study of Wendell Phillips, who in answer to 
his queries told the story of the struggle against 
human slavery which had come to an end through 
the efforts of the brawn and brain of a war-tom 
nation. The young man’s eyes glowed, and in his 
enthusiasm he cried, “ Oh, Mr. Phillips, I wish I 
could have lived in your time!” The polished 
orator, rising quickly from his chair, flung open the 
door of the room and pointing to the lights that 
glimmered out through the darkness of the night, 
said, “ Do you see those shining lights ? They are 
lighting up the saloons and the hell holes of this 
city. There is your work, young man. You are 
indeed living in my time, and you are living in 
God’s time.” 

The teacher who can rightly interpret the teach¬ 
ings of science, and biography and history to his 
pupils has invested the language of the text-book 
with a new meaning and aroused aspirations to- 


92 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


ward the highest life in his pupils, which will make 
the voices of the past call insistently for a devotion 
of his life to a righteous cause. In the schoolroom 
he will make his moral choices not from expediency, 
but in accord with the spirit which rings in the lines 
of the poet: 

“ Speak, History! who are life’s victors? 

Unroll thy long annals and say,— 

Are they those whom the world calls victors, 
Who won the success of a day? 

The martyrs or Nero? The Spartans 
Who fell at Thermopylae’s tryst, 

Or the Persians or Xerxes ? 

His judges or Socrates? 

Pilate or Christ ? ” 

It must be admitted that many of our public 
schools are not administered with such high ideals 
in view. Too many instructors have lacked either 
the courage or the conscience to take their great 
opportunity of character formation seriously. On 
the part of the pupil there has often been the lack 
of an appreciation of the moral chance of his high 
school years. In this period so peculiar he under¬ 
stands little about himself and the teacher often 
understands less. What the real moral effect of 
the public school is upon the life of the pupil can 
better be judged by some of the confessions from 
the pages of personal experience. 

With the desire to know something of the forces 
that operate in the life of the youth, I prepared a 
questionnaire and sent it out to the ministers of a 
large Methodist conference. Among the inquiries 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


93 


concerning the influence of their home training and 
school life, one question—“ What effect did your 
life in the public school have upon your religious 
life?”—brings some interesting replies. A tabu¬ 
lation of one hundred and seventy-five reports 
gives tlie following result: Influence good, thirty- 
two; influence bad, twenty-eight; no effect either 
way, eighty-eight; no reply, twenty-seven. In the 
cases where the results were good, several said 
that they were influenced for good by the life of 
certain teachers; one saying, “ two teachers es¬ 
pecially helped me,” another, “ a Christian teacher 
left a decided influence on my life for good,” still 
another, “ an encouraging effect on account of the 
religious life of the teachers.” Other statements 
regarding the good effects were—“ gave me a new 
vision of life, and fitted me to a certain extent for 
the work in which I am now engaged,” “ on the 
whole stimulated my religious life,” “ part of the 
time it was conducive to my religious life, and 
part of the time otherwise.” Those who noted a 
bad influence coming out of their public school life 
speak as follows: “The temptations and associa¬ 
tions made it hard to be a Christian,” “ very detri¬ 
mental,” “ non-religious as far as I can remem¬ 
ber,” “ always more or less of a depressing agent,” 
“ took away every religious impression,” “ very 
little that was helpful.” 

The large number who found that the religious 
effect of the public school was neutral, and the 
fact that those who believed the influence bad is 
nearly as large as those who are positive concern- 


94 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


ing the good effect, would indicate that the public 
school in the life of many of these boys was not 
a very vital religious help. The questionnaire is 
not comprehensive enough to base broad conclu¬ 
sions upon, but it may be assumed that the men who 
answered the questions represent quite fairly the 
type among the middle class of our people. The 
larger number of them were from Christian homes, 
and but few from homes positively irreligious. If 
the idea of the supposed badness of ministers’ sons 
were to be accepted as the general reason for the 
failure of the boys to get moral and religious help 
from their school life, it will have to be taken into 
account that only twenty-six of these preachers 
were sons of the parsonage, while the remainder 
were from the homes of the ordinary American 
citizen. 

This little view from the recollections of some 
serious and well-balanced individuals, as well as 
some personal memories concerning the public 
school years, leads me to conclude that the school 
is the moral battle ground of the youth. It is his 
world, so to speak, in which he must learn through 
study, play, and discipline, the responsibilities of 
living—not only that interior life of the soul which 
he lives with himself,—but the kind of behaviour 
he shall exhibit toward his fellows. 

In considering the moral influence of the public 
school we must remember that it is the agency most 
responsible for the character ideals of the rising 
generation,—next to the home life. The Church 
can scarcely expect to compete with the school as 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


95 


an influence upon the moral life of youth if the 
tendency of the school is antagonistic or even 
neutral in regard to religion and morals. In the 
thought of the average youth the school occupies a 
larger place than does the Church. The pupil who 
must attend a school where the ethical side of his 
nature is given no cultivation deserves the sym¬ 
pathy of society, and,—if he falls into crime,—the 
leniency of the courts of justice. 

The influences of the school life begin early in 
the life of the child, and the whole school curric¬ 
ulum must be considered when attempting to in¬ 
troduce moral and religious training. Educators 
have discovered that the moral life of the preado¬ 
lescent boy must have consideration if they are to 
have success in establishing him in good character 
in his years of youth. It is in the grades where 
the moral foundations are laid which give a certain 
bent to high school years. Prof. C. E. Joiner, an 
Illinois superintendent of schools, made a tabula¬ 
tion, a few years since, of troublesome boys— 
“ pre-delinquents ” as they are designated. Com¬ 
plete statistics were received from schools in nine 
Illinois cities, and boys from the third to the eighth 
grades were included in the investigation. The 
total number considered was 2,452, and of these 
three hundred and twenty-two were liable to be¬ 
come delinquents later on. Nearly one hundred 
and fifty of these were from bad homes, nearly 
one hundred were from homes where divorce or 
death had given them fractional parental care, one 
hundred and sixty-seven were never in Sunday 


96 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


school, one hundred and three were from homes 
where there was no religious influence. 

It may be further noted that of these three hun¬ 
dred and twenty-two pre-delinquents, one hundred 
and eighty-eight were older in age than those in 
their class, through irregular attendance or failing 
to pass in their studies. Quite likely many of these 
dropped out before the high school years. Indeed 
this is usually the case with the delinquent youth,— 
from one cause or another he leaves school in the 
latter part of his grade school career, or during the 
first year of high school. A study of the school 
records of two hundred and sixty-two delinquent 
boys who were before the Chicago Juvenile courts 
showed that only three of them ever reached the 
high school, while twenty-nine others got only as 
far as the eighth grade. Forty-five per cent did 
not get beyond the fifth grade, and twenty-five 
per cent were below the fifth grade. In the light 
of these figures the problem of the moral training 
which should be afforded by the public school will 
not be considered simply as a high school need. 

It cannot be questioned that the public schools 
have before them a greater moral and religious 
opportunity—in many communities, at least—than 
the church school. Indeed, considering the ques¬ 
tion in a nation-wide sense, with a public school 
enrollment of 22,000,000 there are more young 
people under the influence of the public schools 
than the Sunday schools can boast of reaching with 
their teaching. Recent figures show the number 
of young people and children under the age of 


IN THE LIFE OF TOMOBROW 


97 


twenty-five years in church schools—Protestant, 
Catholic and Jewish,—to be 16,318,900. Com¬ 
paring these figures with the total population of 
young people under the age of twenty-five, it is 
shown that fully sixty-nine and three-tenths per 
cent are receiving no systematic instruction in 
morals and religion. Multitudes of these youth 
who have no access to, or desire for, the church 
and Sunday-school influences are in our public 
schools. With proper thought and planning upon 
the part of educational leaders much may be done 
for the moral and religious development of these. 
The situation is such that it amounts to a spiritual 
tragedy, if not in the end to national decline and 
death, if the school system makes no attempt to 
measure up to its tremendous moral responsibility. 

To secure the moral atmosphere that will be 
morally invigorating in our public schools will re¬ 
quire that the nation invest more than money in its 
schools. The proposed introduction of a secretary 
of education in the President’s Cabinet to sit side 
by side with the men who look after our money and 
care for the health of our hogs, is a movement in 
the right direction. But the efforts that will count 
for immediate results of the right character will 
be the high moral demands of Christian commu¬ 
nities who shall make it impossible for men of low 
ideals or women of frivolous character to attempt 
to teach our youth; the payment of salaries that 
shall sustain the teacher in a comfortable manner; 
and the honour to his calling which shall assure him 
of public respect;—these will all contribute to the 


98 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


establishment of the moral ideals of which we may 
be proud. 

The character of the teacher is, after all, the 
keynote of the school. Once, when in college, I 
remember having heard an address by an English 
lecturer who came to tell us of his beloved teacher 
—whose name is a fragrant memory on both sides 
of the sea—Thomas Arnold, of Rugby. The 
memory of his story of Arnold’s character and 
the Rugby school associates itself with Thomas 
Hughes’ description of a boy’s first day in chapel 
at Rugby, listening to the Doctor’s preaching: 

“ We couldn’t enter into half that we heard; we 
hadn’t the knowledge of our own hearts or the knowl¬ 
edge of one another, and little enough of the faith 
and hope and love needed to that end. But we 
listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen 
(aye, and men too, for the matter of that), to a man 
whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul, and 
strength, striving against whatever was mean, and 
unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was 
not the cold clear voice of one giving advice and 
warning from serene heights to those who were strug¬ 
gling and sinning below, but the warm living voice of 
one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and 
calling on us to help him and ourselves and one 
another. And so, wearily and little by little, but 
surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home 
to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his 
life,—that it was no fool’s or sluggard’s paradise into 
which he wandered by chance, but a battle-field 
ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, 
but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes 
are life and death.” 


VII 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE 
CHURCH SCHOOL 

O F all the institutions of the Church prob¬ 
ably none has been more changed and en¬ 
larged in conception and purpose since its 
humble beginning than the church school. The 
school organized by Robert Raikes, which has 
generally been considered the genesis of the Sun¬ 
day-school movement, was in a large degree social 
and reformatory in character. It was primarily 
intended as a civilizing influence for the street 
gamin, and adapted only to the neglected boys of 
the slums. The organization had no ecclesiastical 
standing, and for many years fought out a pre¬ 
carious existence both in England and America be¬ 
fore the Church approved and recognized it as an 
adjunct of its work. 

Early conceptions of the Sunday school gave it 
a subordinate place in the Church’s program, some¬ 
what dubiously acknowledging its value in religious 
training. In 1785—only five years after Raikes’ 
first school was established,—John Wesley wrote, 
“ Who knows but what some of these schools may 
become nurseries for Christians?” The nursery 
conception of the Sunday school lingered with the 
Church for many years, and the first Sunday 

99 

> 


) 


100 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


schools were doubtless composed exclusively of 
those of tender years. 

The institution has long been known by the 
name “ Sunday school,” but some have insisted on 
the name “ Sabbath school ” or “ Bible school.” 
Among a large number of experts in religious 
education the name “ church school ” has more 
recently won recognition as an acceptable and ap¬ 
propriate title. There is a wide-spread conviction 
that this organization is just now entering in upon 
a new era of usefulness as the most important 
factor in the religious life of the youth of our land. 
The foundation for this new and enlarged work 
of the church school has been laid by the patient 
endeavour of those who have carried on the work 
of the Sunday school through the century and 
more of its existence. We mean no depreciation 
of this time-honoured institution of the Church 
when we prophesy the larger mission of the church 
school. 

A consideration of the difficulties which have 
hitherto hindered the school of the Church from 
meeting youth’s needs in the highest degree will 
doubtless be helpful in planning for the future pro¬ 
gram of greater effectiveness. We have not yet 
reached the place where we can say that the Church 
has corrected its deficiencies regarding its approach 
to youth. The thin place in our school enroll¬ 
ment is always found in the years from twelve to 
twenty-five,—the very period covered by our study. 
Every Christian worker knows that the holding of 
the intermediate boy and girl in the Sunday school 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 101 


is a difficult task. The boys especially,—from 
many different causes,—drop out as the years of 
youth come on. 

A situation somewhat analogous is humorously 
depicted by a Sunday-school worker. He had 
visited the home of a certain family in an outlying 
district where he found one child,—a little girl who 
was passionately fond of pets. She had a pet dog, 
a pet cat, and a pet calf. Talking on his favourite 
subject of the Sunday school he inspired the little 
girl with the thought, and after his departure she 
organized a Sunday school with the dog and the 
cat and the calf as pupils. Writing to her friend 
she told him of her new school. A few months 
later the gentleman was again passing through the 
neighbourhood and playfully asked how the Sunday 
school was getting along. The child replied, “ Oh, 
it’s all broke up now; the calf got too big to go to 
Sunday school.” 

For some years the church and Sunday-school 
worker has noted with far too much complacency 
the dropping out of the adolescent boy from his 
former place in the school; considering that he 
would probably be brought back some time; and 
if not—such religious degeneracy was his own 
fault anyway. The matter was often too lightly 
passed by as a joke—a mere episode of the “ smart 
Aleck ” age. So it has come to pass that practi¬ 
cally every community has notable groups of young 
people who have become “ too big to go to Sunday 
school.” The Church's lack of ability to cope with 
the situation results in the loss of many boys and 


102 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


girls from the Sunday schools in the most vital 
years of character formation. The elementary 
superintendent of a Sunday school in an eastern 
city said that during ten years more boys had been 
graduated from the primary department which she 
superintended than there were members of the 
school at the end of the ten year period. It is to 
be hoped that this is an exceptional case. A num¬ 
ber of careful surveys have however revealed the 
depressing fact that the average Sunday school 
loses each year from one-half to two-thirds of its 
boys in the period which divides childhood from 
youth. 

Not only does the Church have to answer for 
the failure to keep that which has been committed 
to its trust, but the unreached multitudes of the 
young arise to condemn us for our careless neglect. 
The statistics of the Inter-Church World Move¬ 
ment show that twenty-seven millions of nominally 
Protestant children and youth under twenty-five 
years of age are not enrolled in any Sunday school; 
while the total statistics concerning the spiritually 
neglected of our land show that two out of every 
three young people under the age of twenty-five 
years attend no religious school. 

There is an added reason why the Sunday school 
has failed to reach the highest standard. It is to 
be found in that inadequate vision which men have 
possessed when they considered its program of 
work. It seems peculiar that many who are per¬ 
fectly familiar with other teaching activities should 
be unwilling to think of the Sunday or church 


IK THE LIFE OF TO-MOBBOW 


103 


school as a school. A high school principal, who 
was also a teacher in the Sunday school, as I spoke 
to her one day concerning the “ school of the 
Church/’ said, “ Why, I never have thought of the 
Sunday school as a school.” A strange notion is 
sometimes possessed by very good people that re¬ 
ligious truths are so supernatural in character that 
they are apprehended by faculties not earthly. 
The modern Christian worker realizes that if the 
church school is to be effective in teaching religious 
truth the same pedagogical laws must be observed 
as in teaching any other subject. 

The narrow vision of the Church’s opportunity 
in its schools of religion is indicated also by the 
very meagre financial investments the Church is 
willing to make for the religious education of the 
young. An investigation of the amounts expended 
for religious work by nineteen churches in a typical 
small city shows that only two cents of each dollar 
was spent for Sunday-school purposes. We are 
told that during 1919 twenty religious bodies in 
this country, representing thirteen millions of mem¬ 
bers, contributed only a per capita average of five 
and two-third cents each for their national boards 
of religious education. The expenditures for re¬ 
ligious education stand out in startling contrast to 
the amount invested in the maintenance of our 
public schools. In the larger number of our Sun¬ 
day schools the per capita expense of the materials 
for religious training are probably much less than 
one dollar; while the recent findings of a survey 
of the country show that the United States is spend- 


104 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


ing an average of forty dollars per year for each 
city child’s education, and twenty-four dollars for 
each rural child. This provision for popular 
education is of course inadequate, but by the side 
of it our investment in religious training appears 
trivial indeed. 

This shortage of provision for religious instruc¬ 
tion has doubtless been more vividly noted by the 
youth themselves than by us of the older genera¬ 
tion. They have compared—in their thought, at 
least—Sunday-school education with the thorough¬ 
ness of their study in the public school, as well as 
the qualifications of the teachers, and the equip¬ 
ment furnished for the work of the school. Very 
often the teacher of the Sunday-school class, 
though of unimpeachable moral character, has lost 
in their respect, because of lack of training for the 
work; the school itself has appeared but a farcical 
imitation of the real thing, and the youth has joined 
the vast number of those who have quitted the 
institution. Possibly it was such a youth who in¬ 
vented the cynical conundrum, “ When is a school 
not a school?—When it is a Sunday school.” 

The inflexibility which the Sunday school has 
possessed has been a great detriment to its com¬ 
plete success. Certain preconceived plans and long- 
established customs have hindered any adaptation 
to a new and better program. We have too long 
burned incense to religious formalities,—seeking 
the letter rather than the spirit. The monotony 
and lack of systematic purpose has been a deaden¬ 
ing thing to the versatile spirit of youth. I have 


IK THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


105 


a vivid recollection of one superintendent who pre¬ 
sided over a school in my youthful days. Being 
no singer himself, he seemed to think it a waste of 
time to have much singing in his school. With 
somewhat of a taste for music, I often sang at 
other times all the verses of four and five verse 
hymns without tiring. But the good old man 
always cut the two or three hymns we sang each 
Sunday in our school to only two verses, and the 
monotony of his announcement—“ last verse ”— 
has lingered with me through the years. A ver¬ 
satility is given to the public schools in the advan¬ 
tage of a new teacher and a new personality as 
the child proceeds from grade to grade; but the 
same child in the Sunday school often has the same 
teacher and the same class pew through many 
years. In one church where I had recently become 
pastor, a boy in the junior years said, “ Say, can’t 
I go in that other class? I’ve been in this class for 
seven years now.” 

The monotony of method with which the 
average Sunday school is afflicted is due largely to 
the wrong emphasis which may have been placed 
upon the essential element in the Sunday school. 
A Sunday-school expert recently declared to a 
group of workers that there are three essential 
things in the church school—the teacher, the book, 
and the pupil,—and followed the declaration with 
the question, “ Which of these is most important? ” 
The answers given showed great confusion upon 
this point. And yet upon our answer to this ques¬ 
tion determines in large degree the effectiveness of 


106 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


the school. If it is placed upon the teacher it will 
mean that the class and the method of approach to 
the learner shall be subject to one individual. If 
it is placed upon the Book—valuable as we believe 
the Bible to be as the basis of all right thinking 
and living,—it will mean that he who knows the 
Bible need not concern himself with knowing the 
boy. It must be John for the Bible and not the 
Bible for John. If we place the emphasis upon the 
pupil, it will mean that the teacher shall make his 
preparation not from his own standpoint of need, 
and that the Bible shall not be considered as a 
general message to humanity, but that all truth— 
whether Biblical or otherwise—shall be focused 
upon the pupil’s need. Perhaps it is not strange 
that the group of workers should finally have fixed 
their vote upon the pupil as the most important of 
the trio of elements in the modern Sunday school. 
With this thought in mind—influenced no doubt 
by the more thorough organization of the public 
school, and by the insistent demand of dissatisfied 
youth,—the modern church school has become a 
new creation, with methods based upon the senti¬ 
ment, “ The need of the pupil is the law of the 
school.” 

The outstanding features of the modern Sunday 
school affect both the teacher and the pupil, and 
the method of handling the Book. The material 
of instruction and the pupils are subject to an exact 
grading, and the teachers and leaders are trained 
for their specific work. Whatever objection may 
develop concerning the matter of grading or 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


107 


teacher training will not be from the pupil,—but 
is more usually from the adult leaders in the old- 
time Sunday school. The young people are used 
to the idea of the graded instruction and sys¬ 
tematic organization which belongs to a school. 
They take readily to hand-work, note-books, map 
drawing, written essays and discussions,—all these 
things are a part of real study. Unless disturbed 
by the unfavourable comments of their elders, the 
introduction of modern methods into the Sunday 
school will not seem an incongruity. 

The lessons of the graded series have been 
especially chosen with the thought of making re-’ 
ligious truth real to youth. An examination of 
the lesson material furnished for the pupils from 
twelve to twenty years of age will show that the 
lessons make possible a more natural and timely 
presentation of religious truth than old methods 
could ever give. Where there has been difficulty 
in the use of the new lesson material it has usually 
been because of the lack of sympathetic and con¬ 
secrated teachers to take up the work. A very 
widely used graded course of lessons has planned 
its work to meet the needs of the different ages 
as follows: Beginning with pupils about the age 
of thirteen a series of lessons on “ Leaders of 
Israel,” is taken up, while the last three months 
considers “ Religious Leaders in North America.” 
The course on leaders is continued through the 
larger part of the next year, with “ Early Chris¬ 
tian Leaders,” and the last quarter is devoted to 
“ Some Famous Friendships.” “ The Life of 


108 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Christ ” comes next, and presents Jesus entering 
in upon His work, follows the years of His popu¬ 
larity, and shows how He faced opposition and 
death, and rose again. The last three months of 
this year is filled with an inspiring missionary 
study—the Life of David Livingstone,—under the 
title, “A Modern Disciple of Jesus Christ.” At 
the age of about sixteen there is a study of “ Chris¬ 
tian Living/’ and this is followed by lessons on 
the general subject of “ The World as a Field for 
Christian Service.” Historical studies founded on 
both Old and New Testaments form the basis of 
study in the next two years, while the last year 
of the course gives a study of “ The Bible and 
Social Living,” presenting Christian standards of 
family and community life, with practical studies 
on Christian ethics in Church and state and in the 
industrial order. 

It will be noted upon a close examination that 
this graded course takes advantage of youth’s ap¬ 
preciation of the hero. A criticism recently given 
by a very zealous—but somewhat misinformed— 
man, concerning the material of the graded lessons, 
was that it was impossible to contribute to the 
salvation of the child by “ teaching about George 
Washington; the teacher should present Jesus 
Christ to his pupils.” A more careful considera¬ 
tion of the matter ought to bring the good brother 
to see that in presenting to the youth the idea that 
God is still working in the lives of men and in the 
destinies of nations we are putting into their 
thought a very vital concept. What matters it to 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


109 


the average youth that men three thousand years 
ago had the presence of God with them, if God is 
not present in the life of to-day? The natural 
admiration of the heroic which dwells in the soul 
of youth makes even the minor ethical details of a 
hero’s life into mighty texts which tell of holy 
living. 

The story of Mary Antin, a foreign immigrant 
girl, contains the following: “ When, after the 
Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of 
Washington, ... it seemed to me that all my 
reading and study had been idle until then. The 
reader, the arithmetic, the song book, that had so 
fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober 
exercise books, tools wherewith to hew a way to 
the source of inspiration. . . . When the 
classes read, and it came my turn, my voice shook 
and the book trembled in my hands. I could not 
pronounce the name of George Washington with¬ 
out a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I 
chanted the songs of David, never had I called 
upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence and 
worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my 
child’s story of the patriot. . . . Formerly I 
had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the 
day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, 
in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of 
sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punish¬ 
ment. . . . As I read about the noble boy who 

would not tell a lie to save himself from punish¬ 
ment, I was for the first time repentant of my sins.” 

The appeal of youth’s love of the heroic is 


110 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


closely associated with the thought of Christian 
service, with which the Biblical material and the 
extra biographical studies are replete. The wis¬ 
dom of our specialists in this field of education is 
noted also in the studies which show the Christian’s 
relation to society and the state. When such 
courses are widely adopted we may expect sweep¬ 
ing changes in the character of the citizen and in 
the intelligence and spirituality of the Christian. 

The one who has gained a vision of the mission 
of the church school will realize that the organiza¬ 
tion has to do with the whole life of its pupils. 
Religious education is no longer concerned with 
the matter of book knowledge alone, for the pupil 
has a body as well as a brain and a soul. For¬ 
merly the Sunday school was little interested in the 
bodily life of the pupil. In a questionnaire pre¬ 
sented a few years ago at some conventions of a 
certain denominational young people’s society I 
gathered from the delegates present answers to the 
question, “ Does your church, young people’s 
society, or Sunday school, interest themselves in 
athletics ? ” The replies indicated quite a general 
lack of interest in such endeavours on the part of 
these organizations. But changes have gradually 
come within only a few years. Athletic teams have 
been organized in many places and in an increas¬ 
ing number of churches the Sunday-school pupils 
are receiving some physical development where 
there would be none at all if the church did not 
furnish it. 

Associated with the activities of a physical 



IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


111 


nature the modern Sunday school is in many locali¬ 
ties conducting a large part of the recreational 
activities of the community. The social touch has 
indeed been the stronghold of the Sunday school 
through many years of its existence. The adoles¬ 
cent especially goes to Sunday school because 
others of his set are there. A very interesting 
amount of data in answer to the question “ Why 
do boys go to Sunday school ? ” has been gathered 
by Dr. R. A. Waite, for some time connected with 
the International work of the Boys’ Department of 
the Young Men’s Christian Association. The 
reasons given by these teen-age boys in a total of 
eight thousand cases range in precedence, as fol¬ 
lows: (1) because of the crowd or gang spirit; 
(2) because of leader or teacher; (3) because 
of recreational life; (4) because of desire to 
“belong”—the organization spirit; (5) because 
of opportunity to render service for others. The 
reasons for leaving Sunday school were the absence 
of these elements. 

The modem Sunday school is at present taking 
advantage of another neglected factor in its ap¬ 
peal to youth. It was formerly thought that the 
Sundav school was to build itself around the notion 
of instruction; but the school of the present day 
is beginning to emphasize the element of worship 
in a way that will make for splendid results. The 
“ opening exercises ” of the old-time Sunday school 
have given way to the more meaningful moments 
of worship in the various departments of the new 
church school. The singing of the hymns will 


112 


THE YOUTH OP TO-DAY 


not be for the purpose of filling in time until some 
tardy teachers and dallying pupils arrive, but for 
suggesting the thought of the day and the lesson 
hour, for the uplift of heart that is necessary if we 
are to come into touch with the Divine. The par¬ 
ticipation in the opening service of prayer, and the 
personal prayer of the class room, is a religious 
necessity for the youth in the absence of the family 
altar and the depopulated condition of the church 
prayer meeting. It may be here said also that the 
adolescent boy or girl will better learn to pray 
among those of his own sex and age than in the 
mixed or promiscuous gathering. With mixed 
gatherings of young people meeting together in 
the young people’s societies for a generation past 
we still have few young people that can lead in 
public prayer. May it not be that the Sunday- 
school class in its worship period can better teach 
the youth the art of prayer among his fellows 
than we have yet been able to do in the more 
public way ? It was in the very intimate surround¬ 
ings of the chosen few that the disciples said, 
“ Lord, teach us to pray.” 

The outline of the activities and possibilities of 
the church school which this chapter furnishes is 
inadequate to show in detail the changes which 
have taken place in the Sunday school in the 
period of over one hundred and forty years since 
the organization first began. The present scope 
of the church school is only hinted, when in the 
words of a prominent Sunday-school worker we 
quote the statement: “ Any completed program of 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOBBOW 113 


religious education must include the three factors 
of worship, instruction, and expression.” The 
primary purpose of the church school is not dif¬ 
ferent from the Sunday school of our fathers, for 
it must still be understood that the program of the 
school’s activities centers in an adequate presenta¬ 
tion of the Christ of the Bible as the Saviour and 
Guide of youth. The results which have come 
from the Sunday-school teaching of the genera¬ 
tions past have abundantly justified the consecra¬ 
tion of energy which has made them possible, and 
the future of the church school is bright with 
promise. A field which has yielded such rich re¬ 
turns during the years agone will still prove the 
best investment for the Christian worker who seeks 
to find the treasures of life and character for the 
Church that is yet to be. 


VIII 


YOUNG PEOPLE ORGANIZED 
FOR SERVICE 

A PRINCIPLE recognized among educators 
as a basis of effective teaching is, “ No 
impression without expression.” In the 
religious as well as the secular side of life the youth 
must have avenues for that expression which is as 
naturally a part of his religious nature as his 
physical restlessness is a part of his human nature. 
Any conception of the religious life which limits 
it simply to matters of belief is not a popular one 
with young people. The young Christian is ready 
to show to the world his faith by his works. 

The earlier conceptions of religious training af¬ 
forded but little room for any outward expression. 
Years ago the Sunday school had but one program 
for its younger attendants,—they were to sit on 
a bench and listen respectfully to the teacher, re¬ 
plying perhaps in parrot-like manner to a formal 
set of questions, for which printed answers were 
already provided; or else to repeat from memory 
random verses from the Scriptures (often selected 
for their brevity). Any other opportunity for 
religious activity was limited indeed; although a 
few young persons would occasionally break 
through their narrowed environment and become 

114 


THE LIFE OF TO-MOKKOW 


115 


even in youth useful as teachers or religious 
leaders. Generally speaking, however, such ac¬ 
tivities were not expected, and the young disciple 
was required to wait patiently until the days of 
maturity should fit him to be of service in Chris¬ 
tian work. 

The opportunities for religious expression have 
multiplied many fold in a generation. The young 
people of the Church never had such unlimited 
fields in which to labour for their Master and voice 
their message as to-day. Such results have come 
to pass largely because of the efforts on the part 
of the leaders of the Church to develop the hidden 
resources of youth, and are a direct result of the 
modern idea of organizing the young life for Chris¬ 
tian service. 

The most prominent organization for training 
in the details of Christian service is the young 
people’s society. It may be said that the young 
people’s movement,—represented by the Christian 
Endeavour, the Epworth League, the Baptist 
Young People’s Union, and kindred organizations 
—has virtually been the religious emancipator of 
the young. Dr. Francis E. Clark, the originator 
of the Young People’s Society of Christian En¬ 
deavour, said that this organization “ took the pad¬ 
lock off from woman’s mouth.” And this state¬ 
ment is probably true of those churches which 
formerly held to the literal interpretation of St. 
Paul’s advice that “ the women keep silence in the 
churches.” 

The genesis of the Christian Endeavour move- 


116 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


ment, as described by Dr. Clark, shows how the 
new organization was the direct outgrowth of a 
need which he as a pastor felt in dealing with the 
adolescent youth of his congregation. He writes: 

“ In the winter of 1880-81 in connection with some 
Sunday-school prayer meetings, quite a number of 
boys and girls of my congregation seemed hopefully 
converted. Their ages ranged from ten to eighteen, 
most of them being over fourteen years old. The 
question became serious, How shall this band be 
trained, how shall they be set to work, how shall they 
be fitted for church membership? . . . Stimu¬ 

lated and guided by an article of Dr. Cuyler’s con¬ 
cerning a young people’s association in his own 
church, I asked the young Christians to my house to 
consider the formation of a society for Christian 
work. They responded in large numbers, and after 
talking the matter over, finding them eager and wish¬ 
ing to enter upon religious duties, we formed a so¬ 
ciety of Christian Endeavour of some sixty mem¬ 
bers.” 

Various scattered organizations for young people 
had existed previous to the formation of the Chris¬ 
tian Endeavour, but the society organized by Dr. 
Clark, at Williston, Maine, February 2, 1881, was 
the real beginning of a popular movement destined 
to spread over the world, binding together the 
youth of all lands in the ties of Christian fellow¬ 
ship and service. The publicity given—and the 
success attending—this new movement doubtless 
assisted in the organization of the great denomina¬ 
tional young people’s societies, the largest of which 
is the Epworth League. 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


117 


This Methodist organization was virtually a 
union of five different societies, which had flour¬ 
ished for some time previous, most of them having 
been organized during the 80’s. The new society, 
—organized at Cleveland, Ohio, May 14, 1889,— 
sprang into rapid favour, and the League took the 
place of the Christian Endeavour in the Methodist 
churches generally. Other societies, with kindred 
objects, had their beginnings also within the ten or 
fifteen years following Dr. Clark’s Endeavour pro¬ 
gram, and the young people’s society became a 
regular feature of the church’s work. 

The aims of these societies as originally stated 
reveal a tendency to the self-centered type of Chris¬ 
tianity. The Endeavour pledge, as originally set 
forth, contains promises to read the Bible and pray 
every day, to attend the meetings of the society and 
take part, and several general statements, such as, 
“ as far as I know how through my whole life I 
will endeavour to lead a Christian life,” “ I promise 
to be true to all my duties,” and “ I will strive to 
do whatever He would like to have me do.” The 
pledge relates to individual Christian duties, and 
unless the general statements are supposed to in¬ 
clude the idea, there is no promise to consider the 
needs of our fellow men. The Epworth League 
had as its originally pronounced aim, “ to promote 
an earnest, intelligent, practical and loyal spiritual 
life in the young people of our church, to aid them 
in constant growth in grace and in the attainment 
of purity of heart.” This too is an individualistic 
religion, and it speaks well for the sagacity of the 


118 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


leaders of the society that very soon afterward 
the aim of the society was revised and worded as 
follows: 

u The object of the League is to promote intelligent 
and loyal piety in the young members and friends of 
the Church, to aid them in the attainment of purity 
of heart and in constant growth in grace, and to train 
them in works of mercy and help” 

Recognition of the claims of others upon the 
young Christian’s sympathy and help is voiced in 
such an interpretation of the Christian life. The 
increase of this social spirit in the Church as a 
whole has no doubt been fostered in large degree 
by the young people’s movement. The Church’s 
wider conception of the Christian life has been but 
the natural outcome of the recreational, philan¬ 
thropic and missionary activities of these societies. 
The awakened missionary interest, the program of 
Christian stewardship, and the Church’s attempt to 
provide a clean and uplifting recreational life for 
the young,—all these are but the fruitage from the 
systematic training given in these organizations 
during the past generation. 

The most daring achievements of faith have not 
seemed too great for the organized youth of the 
Church. At the International Christian En¬ 
deavour convention at Los Angeles in 1913 a motto 
was adopted—“ A saloonless United States in 
1920,” and an aggressive campaign was organized 
against the liquor traffic. The chairman of the 
temperance division in presenting his report to the 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MOKKOW 


119 


great convention expressed the hope of a Federal 
constitutional amendment which should prohibit 
the manufacture and sale of liquor. The realiza¬ 
tion of such high hopes seemed farther off to those 
of mature age, but youth was able to prophesy 
with an assurance born of faith. 

Years before this, at a great denominational con¬ 
vention of young people a paper was circulated for 
signatures, in which the signers agreed to subscribe 
only for daily newspapers which should refuse to 
publish saloon advertising. At that time all the 
leading dailies of that state published such adver¬ 
tising. Within a short time after the movement 
became public, three leading dailies of the state ex¬ 
cluded the offensive advertising from their 
columns. 

Not only in movements of reform and social 
betterment has the young people’s society shown its 
power, but in a directly religious way the new 
movement has exercised a most salutary influence 
upon the Church. The fact that an organization 
has maintained for more than a generation weekly 
devotional meetings in hundreds of thousands of 
churches from the smallest chapel to the costliest 
city temple, and still continues its spiritual sway 
over each succeeding group of young folks, entitles 
it to serious consideration as a vital force in re¬ 
ligious education. Of all the character-making in¬ 
fluences of the young people’s society none has 
such possibilities for deep and lasting impressions 
upon the inner life of youth as that afforded by 
the Sunday evening devotional hour. It adds 


120 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


inspiration to the imaginative youth to think of this 
hour of worship as linking him with a wide 
brotherhood of his fellows, many of them in lands 
afar, and if he has made any serious preparation 
for the service, either as leader or participant,— 
his heart will be in tune with the spirit of the 
original verses given by a young lady who led a 
certain devotional meeting of the Epworth League, 
where I chanced to worship with the church’s 
gathered youth: 

“ In the quiet of the evening, 

As the shadows gently fall, 

We meet as one to worship 

In the churches large and small. 

-f 

" For we sit in the twilight shadows 
As the eventide is near, 

And here we discuss our problems 
From hearts that are often drear. 

“ We hear our comrades purpose 
To walk in the better ways, 

And vow again within us 

To be true through all our days. 

“ We find the days are brighter,— 

Friendships more sweet and strong 
For the evenings spent together 

With the League in prayer and song.” 

In addition to the young people’s society as a 
training force for young life, the organized Sun¬ 
day-school class has more recently come into 
prominence. The activities of the class are similar 
to the activities of the society, and in the smaller 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


121 


church quite frequently nearly the same group of 
young people belong to both. Church leaders are 
beginning to feel that there should be some co¬ 
ordination of work that would prevent a needless 
duplication of effort. If this is not done by de¬ 
nominational leaders it should be accomplished by 
each local church for itself. 

As a rule, young people themselves will not pro¬ 
test against the multiplication of organizations, for 
the natural instinct of the adolescent is to organize. 
The results of a questionnaire sent out by Dr. 
Henry D. Sheldon show somewhat of the spon¬ 
taneity of the organization mania among boys 
when we note that of 1,034 responses from boys 
from ten to eighteen years of age, eight hundred 
and fifty-one were members of clubs or clans which 
they had organized for themselves. Sunday-school 
authorities have taken advantage of this natural 
desire, and the organized class is now being ex¬ 
tensively used as a means of creating a beneficial 
class spirit and extending the influence of the 
school. 

Both the church school and the young people’s 
society are being used as effective agencies in the 
training of young people in organized church work. 
Without the assistance of some special training 
the officers of the Church of the future will have 
little idea of the importance and scope of their 
work. A pastor, offering one of his young men a 
place on the official board of the church, said, 
“ Will, how would you like to become a steward ? ” 
And Will, whose home was not more than a mile 


122 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


from New York harbour, answered, “Steward? 
What boat?” The time for the training of the 
church official is not when he is needed to fill some 
responsible position in the gift of the church, but 
years before the need arises, that the fit man may 
be at hand when the crisis is upon us. 

The present system of graded instruction in our 
Sunday schools which is rapidly displacing the 
uniform lessons, is the basis of the effective class 
organization scheme which necessarily associates 
itself with it. Though the idea of graded classes 
—many of them with organized activities—found 
acceptance long before the new graded lesson 
system was put into use, the graded class and the 
graded lesson are both necessary to a successful 
program of religious training. The first begin¬ 
nings of the specialized Sunday-school class are 
found at a much earlier date than the young 
people’s society, for the earliest normal training 
class of which we have any record was organized 
at Joliet, Illinois, in 1857. The present teacher 
training classes are an outgrowth of this normal 
class idea, and the name of Dr. J. H. Vincent, of 
Chautauqua fame, is forever associated in our 
thought with this early teacher-training idea. The 
effectiveness of the graded program of teaching de¬ 
pends upon the trained teacher. The Sunday 
school whose future teaching force will be the most 
proficient is the one who has in training at the 
present time a group of young folks as a reserve 
force from which may be drawn the workers for 
the coming day. The cause of the ineffectiveness 


IK THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


123 


of the Sunday-school teaching of past years is 
due to the fact that we have “ lived from hand 
to mouth ” in our provision of our working force, 
rather than lay foundations for the future by pre¬ 
paring our teachers for their task. 

A similar foresight will provide for other leader¬ 
ship needs. The conservation of the musical talent 
lying practically dormant in the children and the 
youth of the Church will give the coming Church 
a wealth of melody and music from which to draw 
for future needs. The coming ministers and mis¬ 
sionaries are even now hearing their call to service, 
and the Church of the present must give them a 
chance to sail their craft within the home harbour 
ere they launch their boats upon unfriendly seas. 

The success of any organization dealing with the 
adolescent youth will be determined by a recogni¬ 
tion of the laws of the world of youth, the viola¬ 
tion of which will shatter the most elaborately con¬ 
structed system. In the earlier years of adoles¬ 
cence, especially, the organization will do well to 
regard the law of sex separation. It is a question 
if the mixture of the sexes in religious meetings 
does not tend to hamper the development of a 
natural devotional life,—especially on the part of 
boys. Even among mature men I have noted a 
freedom of religious expression in men’s meetings 
which it was difficult to secure when in a devotional 
service composed of men and women. The com¬ 
mingling of several age groups together is not con¬ 
ducive to harmony in teaching or administration. 
The failure of the junior young people’s society 


124 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


has been largely due to the fact that in the old- 
time Junior Endeavour or Junior League, the 
primary, junior and intermediate years were put 
together in one organization. Those who have 
attempted to superintend such work will remember 
how the big boys annoyed the smaller children 
when they were assembled together, and their own 
failure in attempting to interest so many children 
of varied interests and tastes. The same incon¬ 
gruity manifests itself in a different form when 
the gray-headed constituency persists in filling up 
the pews at the young people’s service on Sunday 
evening. 

The effectiveness of the young people’s society 
as an outlet for the service activities of the 
young can only be secured by maintaining it as a 
young folks’ organization. Some effective meas¬ 
ures must be used to make this possible. One 
pastor found on taking charge of a new church 
that the young people’s service was crowded with 
people in mature life, while only a scant half dozen 
youths were present. The first meeting the pastor 
attended he listened to several speeches by a gentle¬ 
man eighty years of age who deplored the fact that 
the young people would not come out to the meet¬ 
ings of the society. After this view of the situa¬ 
tion the pastor gently suggested that if the young 
people came they would find no place to sit down, 
since the seats were all occupied by their elders. 
He ventured further to request that every one over 
forty .years of age stay away from the young 
people’s meeting and give the youth of the church 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


125 


a chance. It was not long before the seats were 
filled with young people who carried on for them¬ 
selves a most successful evening service. While 
it may be possible to use one or two maturer per¬ 
sons whose sympathy and training make possible 
a ready fellowship with the young, the society on 
the whole should be officered and managed by the 
young people themselves. 

In the same manner as those who preceded him, 
the young Christian of to-day will learn only by 
doing. He does not have the spirit of the East 
Indian high caste father, who, because his son must 
learn a trade at the mission school, wished to send 
a servant to do the work that his son might not 
degrade himself by common toil. “ My son can 
learn by watching the servant work,” he said. 
Youth is not so haughty as to reject a menial task 
nor so fearful of failure as to refuse a great one. 
It appeals to his spirit of independence to have 
upon him the responsibility afforded by these Chris¬ 
tian organizations—the opportunity of doing things 
worth while for himself and others. 

The youth will reach his highest point of useful¬ 
ness in the kingdom of Christ only by an attach¬ 
ment to the spiritual ideal. The conscientious 
adolescent who has been raised in a Christian 
environment readily accepts the most solemn 
pledges, inspiring slogans, uplifting mottoes, and 
broad declarations of principles. He wants to 
reach the best. In middle and later adolescence 
his social instincts incline his thought to others, 
and in this period the “ Win-my-chum ” activities 


126 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


of the Epworth League and the “ lookout com¬ 
mittee ” spirit of the Christian Endeavour appeal 
to his religious life. This idea has been effectively 
used by the Baraca young men’s Sunday-school 
class, in their “secret service,”—an inner circle 
pledged to pray every day for the unconverted 
members of the class. 

Some experiences of the writer with the practical 
workings of organized classes for young men and 
women are very pleasant to recall. In one Sunday 
school where the combined attendance of the young 
people of both sexes did not average more than six 
or eight, these organized classes were established. 
With a nucleus of two boys to start with, a class 
of forty boys and young men above the age of 
sixteen was brought together. Some of them had 
not been in Sunday school since their primary days, 
but the zest with which they entered on their work 
was good to behold. The young women’s class 
prospered as well, and at the end of a three years’ 
pastorate nearly one hundred young people were 
associated with that church and Sunday school. 
The church at that place, though more than a dozen 
years have passed, still feels the impetus that came 
from those years of work with the organized classes 
of that school. 

It is not possible to here recount the varied 
activities of these classes. The town was small 
and the recreational opportunities were few. The 
young fellows held frequent socials; conducted a 
physical culture class for fhe boys; had a champion 
team of sure-enough Sunday-school fellows during 


IK THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


127 


the baseball season, and in many ways made an 
impression for good upon the life of the com¬ 
munity. The young people were active as well in 
working to build up attendance at the church serv¬ 
ices and Sunday school. One boy brought in a 
dark-skinned Greek from the gang of section 
hands who lived in a box car near the depot, who 
gave respectful attention to the teaching in the 
class and was welcomed at the social gatherings 
until he finally left with the gang for another field 
of labour. Best of all, I count it a great privilege 
to have received into the church a number of those 
promising young folks, among whom were some 
stalwart young fellows whose profession of 
Christian faith was a direct result of the work of 
the organized class movement. 

The experiences narrated here might be accom¬ 
panied by other instances from the writer’s mem¬ 
ory, for the organized work for young people has 
been a prominent part of the work in a number of 
delightful pastorates in the middle west. From 
these young people’s societies and classes a goodly 
number have gone forth into the service of the 
maturer Christian life whose joy in home and 
Church and college has been enhanced by the 
memories of the spiritual and social associations of 
the earlier days in “ the little brown church in the 
vale.” 


IX 


THE COLLEGE AND ITS REACH 

T HE college is the storm center of the 
intellectual and spiritual progress of 
Christendom. Given youth and the 
school one can change the thought life of the 
world in a generation. Notwithstanding the close 
association between scholastic learning and life's 
higher ideals, our institutions of learning have 
suffered the keenest criticism. A wealthy manu¬ 
facturer said some time ago, “ I have known some 
men who made a success in life in spite of a college 
education." Within church circles both state and 
denominational colleges are subjected to censure by 
those who question the soundness of their religious 
ideals. 

Very largely, however, both Church and state are 
indebted to the college for the leadership which it 
has produced. Less than one per cent of American 
men are college graduates, but out of this one per 
cent has come fifty-five per cent of our Presidents 
and Vice Presidents, over one-third of our mem¬ 
bers of Congress, and nearly seventy per cent of 
the justices of the Supreme Court. The far- 
seeing minds who have led in religious reforms 
were developed in a college environment. Such 
religious leaders as Wyclif and Huss, and Luther 

128 


THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


129 


and Melanchthon, and the Wesleys and Whitefield, 
were all university men. 

The public, who lives so much apart from the 
university atmosphere, as well as the thoughtless 
churchman who is sometimes lavish in his criti¬ 
cisms, knows little how closely the school and re¬ 
ligion are identified with each other’s success. The 
first college established in this country was named 
for the Rev. James Harvard, who gave half his 
fortune to its endowment. The names of other 
schools are also typical of the religious character 
of their founders. It is related that two visitors to 
the campus of old Wesleyan University, at Middle- 
town, Connecticut, were heard discussing John 
Wesley. One said, “ I seem to forget about Jfohn 
Wesley. Who was he?” The other replied in 
the most positive tones, “ You surely know of him. 
He was the founder of this college.” 

Regardless of the fact that the cause of higher 
education owes so much to the Church, it has come 
to be the case in the college as well as the high 
school, that some educators have separated the 
thought of religion and morals from the university 
courses of study, and in many of these institutions 
the appeal to the religious nature of the youth is 
practically negligible. As an instance of a sensi¬ 
tive condition of mind regarding anything ap¬ 
proaching religious teaching we note that a few 
years ago a book on political economy was turned 
down by a certain state institution. The author, 
asking for the reason of its rejection, was told, 
“ Your first sentence is enough to condemn the 


130 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


book.” The sentence referred to was, “ The 
source of all wealth is the beneficence of God.” 

The complete separation of the university from 
the ideals of the moral and religious life has doubt¬ 
less had much to do with the multiplication of the 
church colleges. The influence of these church 
colleges in setting a high standard of moral ideals, 
as well as a growing dissatisfaction with their own 
colourless religious life, has caused many of the 
secular schools to change their attitude toward 
religious and moral teaching, and unite with 
church authorities in trying to cultivate the moral 
life of the students. A president of a large state 
university is quoted as saying: 

“ When I was first in this university I was a pro¬ 
fessor in the science department. Although a Chris¬ 
tian man, I took no interest in the religious affairs of 
the university. I thought that might belong to some 
one else. My work was to teach science. Later I 
became dean of the department and gave myself to 
its organization and administration. The chapel of 
the university and the church had very little interest 
for me, but now that I am president and am charged 
with the responsibility of seeing the total university 
life and planning for its greatest success, I am con¬ 
vinced that the most important matter on this campus 
is the spiritual life and I am giving myself to it in 
every possible way.” 

Some indication of the religious interest of the 
instructors in state colleges may be seen in the 
fact that out of 7,545 teachers in forty-seven of 
these institutions, five hundred and two are teach¬ 
ers of Bible classes, seven hundred and twenty-six 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 131 


are church officials, and 4,073 are members or 
attendants at local churches. In addition to the 
more positive religious influences in college life, an 
examination of the curricula of two hundred and 
ninety colleges regarding the courses given in the 
Bible and religion is of interest. Prof. W. C. 
Gibbs, an educator in a Missouri college, who made 
the tabulation, shows that all of these institutions 
but twenty-one gave courses in Biblical and relig¬ 
ious subjects. It was noted that four hundred and 
forty teachers and executive officers were engaged 
in teaching these courses. The character of the 
studies ranged all the way from the simple study 
of New Testament Greek to an elaborate depart¬ 
ment of Biblical literature. The comparatively 
small number of students taking this work, and the 
fact that but few of the schools have specialists in 
this department, led the investigator to conclude 
that we have not yet reached ideal conditions in 
college Bible study. 

In addition to the charges of religious indiffer¬ 
ence in the faculty, and the lack of positive ethical 
training in our schools, the moral character of the 
students has been the subject of much criticism. 
Conditions in the student body of many institutions 
are far from what they should be, but it is interest¬ 
ing to note that the religious life of the college 
student seems to be more vigorous than in the days 
of our fathers. The Christian Almanac for the 
year 1822 gives religious statistics of twelve lead¬ 
ing universities and colleges. Harvard had two 
hundred and ninety-one students, of whom seven- 


132 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


teen were “ professors of religion.” Other institu¬ 
tions lined up as follows—the figures showing first 
the tot^l enrollment and then the number of pro¬ 
fessed Christians: Yale, three hundred and sixteen 
and ninety-seven; Princeton, one hundred and six¬ 
teen and twenty-five; Dartmouth, one hundred and 
forty-six and sixty-five; Williams, eighty-three and 
forty-two; Middlebury, one hundred and forty- 
eight; Union College, two hundred and fifty-five 
and sixty-six. The total number of students in 
the twelve colleges was 1,821, with five hundred 
and nine professed Christians,—one in about three 
and a half. Some light is shown upon the present 
church affiliation of students by a recent census of 
the University of Chicago,—which has been de¬ 
nounced by some as a “ godless ” school. A recent 
religious census of the school shows that eighty- 
eight per cent of the students are connected with 
some organized religious body, and only three stu¬ 
dents characterize themselves as atheistic or 
agnostic. One-eighth of the students are engaged 
in some form of religious work. During the 
academic year nine-tenths of the students attend 
some religious service at least once a month, and 
half of that number attend at least twice a month. 
As a wider indication of the attitude of the college 
student toward the Church it may be noted that 
statistics gathered by the Inter-Church World 
Movement show that ten large state institutions 
having a total enrollment of 36,802, have a student 
church membership of 22,593, with 5,773 indicat¬ 
ing a preference for some church. The proportion 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOKKOW 133 


of church members in this whole student body is 
nearly eighty per cent. 

It is quite probable that the larger number of 
students who enter our colleges are from homes 
that are nominally Christian. A study of the re¬ 
ligious preferences of the students in the state 
university of Minnesota, by Dr. S. M. Dick, of 
Minneapolis, based upon a comparison of the 
religious statistics of the state with the student 
census, brought him to the conclusion that eleven 
times as many students came from Christian homes 
as from non-Christian homes. Coming from a 
home environment that is often more favourable to 
the conservation of religious ideals than the aver¬ 
age college, it is small wonder that the student often 
experiences a moral shock as a result of tempta¬ 
tions which threaten to destroy his religious life. 
Once it was customary to locate colleges—espe¬ 
cially those denominational in character—several 
miles away from the city in some retired spot where 
moral dangers were not supposed to be so rife. But 
to-day our great institutions of learning are in the 
metropolis, and the student from the rural districts 
must get used to the urban atmosphere. 

The temptations of college life present them¬ 
selves with peculiar insistence, and the specious 
plea that “ everybody does it ” will seem sufficient 
reason for changing his code of personal ethics. 
No student who regards the final outcome of the 
habit will permit himself to think for an instant of 
weakening his moral and intellectual foundation by 
the use of false expedients with which to pass ex- 


134 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


animation tests. And yet the practice of dishonest 
methods,—the constant use of printed English 
translations of the classics, and the riding of 
“ ponies ”—was so common in one western uni¬ 
versity that a few years ago the chancellor of the 
institution was forced to make a public plea to the 
school convocation for the discontinuance of such 
conduct. The most subtile and inoffensive tempta¬ 
tion is usually that of taking college life too easy. 
In my own college days it was jokingly said of 
some students that their course of study was 
“ football, chapel, and campus/’ It is quite true as 
a recent magazine writer has said, that “ college 
life offers all the possibilities in the world for teach¬ 
ing a man to have a great incapacity for work.” 
It is certain that the development which a college 
education brings to the youth is only commensurate 
with the personal cooperation of the student. Un¬ 
fortunately there are many who, through lack of 
mental furnishings, and possibly moral fibre, will 
not yield themselves to even the best educational 
program. 

This situation reminds one of a somewhat hu¬ 
morous story of two men who were walking over 
a very stony field. The man who owned the field 
was telling the other of his intention to give his 
son a thorough education,—“ all that he can 
possibly take in,” as he expressed it. His con> 
panion was quite deaf, and as they went on over 
the field so thickly strewn with stones and gravel, 
supposing that his friend was speaking of the 
irrigating of the soil of the field, he said, “ You 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 135 


can pour on all you're a-mind to; but it won't 
soak in." 

The mental failure of the student, however, is 
not so sorrowful a thing as the moral wrecks which 
it must be admitted come from our halls of learn¬ 
ing. Some of them carry diplomas and all the 
honours of graduation; and others have simply 
fallen out by the way and brought forth not even 
intellectual fruitage. The failure of the church 
college to save even the boy and girl of Christian 
homes and start them out with a moral fitness to be 
of service in life has sometimes occasioned a prej¬ 
udice against the Christian school. Not long ago 
a layman wrote to his bishop concerning the irrelig¬ 
ious state of a near-by college of his denomination. 
The bishop wrote to the disconsolate brother: 

“ From my childhood I have been familiar with 
every argument I have ever heard against your col¬ 
lege, as they have been used against our denomina¬ 
tional colleges. Fifty years ago I heard the same 
stories. Changing the name of the college and the 
names of the students in each set of incidents one 
would need to change no other parts. ... I 
have broken my heart over two or three cases which 
I have sent to our Christian colleges. I have seen 
children go right out of warm Christian homes to 
our Christian schools, get in with the wrong crowd 
of youngsters and instead of becoming deepened in 
their spiritual life and broadened in their vision of 
service for Christ, lose what religious impulse had 
moved them to begin their Christian education. I 
have seen all this, and still I am a devout and en¬ 
thusiastic believer in our whole line of denomina¬ 
tional schools, for what one must look at is not items 


136 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


but totals; not particular instances, but the broad 
general influence of such institutions. The signifi¬ 
cant thing is that in all these years these same 
colleges about whom perfectly true stories of back¬ 
sliding, etc., can be told, have been furnishing our 
Church with her evangelists, her prophets, her 
preachers, and her godly and intelligent laymen, 
insomuch that had it not been for their serv¬ 
ices . . . the supply of our ministers both at 

home and abroad would have practically dried up.” 

As the bishop has indicated, the associates which 
the student finds in his college years either make or 
mar his character. The boy or girl who attends 
the co-educational institution has the opportunity 
to form friendships that are mutually helpful, as 
well as to find an affinity which shall result in a life 
partnership under most favourable auspices. It 
would seem as though the likeness of mental equip¬ 
ment and affinity of tastes should make for the 
best happiness in the home life which follows col¬ 
lege. The character of a college trained woman— 
especially if educated in a Christian school—should 
make her in every way better fitted to be a real 
helpmeet to her husband and an ideal mother to 
her child. Later college life is the normal period 
for the first serious steps toward a matrimonial 
alliance. But even the earlier years will witness 
the beginnings of comradeships which mean much 
to the character of every student. 

The immature age at which our young people 
are entering college should especially be considered 
in dealing with the moral needs of the student. 
From records kept for a number of years past at 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOKKOW 


137 


Princeton University it is stated that the average 
age of students at entrance is 18.7 years. With 
the peculiar conditions of adolescent years, height¬ 
ened no doubt by sudden transplanting into a 
strange environment the young freshman in his 
“ critical first year ”—as it has been denominated 
by a leading educator—deserves all consideration at 
the hand of parent and instructor. The natural 
solicitation of the parent will follow the child, and 
the school which accepts so serious a charge as the 
development of a young life cannot afford to be 
careless concerning its moral atmosphere. 

Talking with her son on the eve of his departure 
for college, a mother said, “ Of course you will 
affiliate yourself at once with our university 
church.” The son answered, “ O yes, I will, but 
of course you know, mother, that the university 
students do not go to church.” But on the first 
Sunday of the school year,—though the young 
freshman did not know it,—six hundred students 
of that very college were at the morning service of 
his own church adjoining the campus, and in the 
evening three hundred and fifty-nine students at¬ 
tended the young people’s meeting. On the second 
Sunday of the year two hundred and fifty freshmen 
came into affiliated membership with that church, 
—and let us hope that the boy who thought col¬ 
lege students did not attend church was among that 
number. 

The Church has never recognized its responsi¬ 
bility for the religious life of the college student as 
it does to-day. The encouragement afforded by 


138 


THE YOUTH OP TO-DAY 


/ 

the officials of state institutions in recent years to 
this feature of the Church’s work, and the far¬ 
sighted planning of church leaders has resulted in 
an organized plan for the carrying on of this work. 
The various denominations have appointed pastors 
to the university students, church headquarters 
have been erected contiguous to the campus of the 
schools, and religious and social work is carried 
on with the students. The pastors of local 
churches also assist in this work, and the Sunday 
services in these college centers are arranged 
especially with the spiritual welfare of the students 
in mind. Various courses in Bible study and gen¬ 
eral religious themes are provided in connection 
with the Sunday schools,—these classes being 
taught by university men with the same earnest¬ 
ness of purpose that characterizes the week day 
studies of the university. The various churches 
of Iowa City, where the University of Iowa is 
located, have twenty of these classes, one church 
alone maintaining eight different courses. 

The good results of persistent religious work 
among the students of a state university can be 
seen in the fact that at the University of Iowa 
there has been a one hundred and forty per cent 
increase in the church membership of the body, 
while the per cent of increase in school enrollment 
has been but one hundred and twenty-eight. A 
recent tabulation of the church attendance of 
students at Iowa City shows a Sunday attendance 
of 1,668, with seven hundred and fifty-five attend¬ 
ing young people’s society and eight hundred and 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 139 


sixty-three in special training and Bible classes. 
The officers and leaders of the young people’s 
societies are largely students, and fifty per cent of 
the members of the church choirs are students. 
The church attendance is so largely made up of 
the student body—so statements issued by the 
school authorities say—that “ were it not for the 
students congregations would often be small in¬ 
deed.” A Presbyterian minister, president of the 
Ministerial Union of the city, says, “ It is necessary 
for all of us constantly to bear in mind that we 
are preaching and speaking to young people.” 

For a good many years past the Young Men’s 
Christian Association and the Young Women’s 
Christian Association have maintained organiza¬ 
tions in the colleges both state and denominational. 
For a long time these societies were the only re¬ 
ligious features of the state supported school. 
The pioneer work of these associations in assist¬ 
ing both the social and religious life of college 
students has doubtless contributed in large degree 
to the success of the present efforts for the re¬ 
ligious welfare of the college student. 

As an outgrowth of this work of the association 
came the student volunteer movement for missions. 
This movement,—having as its inspiring slogan, 
“ The world for Christ in this generation,”—has 
exercised a great influence in missionary propa¬ 
ganda, as well as inspiring thousands to give their 
lives to missionary and evangelistic endeavour. 
At its national convention held in Des Moines, 
Iowa, December 31 to January 4, 1919-20, there 


140 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


were seven thousand delegates present represent¬ 
ing one thousand educational institutions. Nearly 
five hundred students from foreign lands were 
present. Young people to the number of fifteen 
hundred who had definitely consecrated themselves 
to foreign mission work, were among the delegates. 
Reports showed that since the first volunteer organ¬ 
ization was formed over eight thousand from these 
student associations had gone forth as foreign mis¬ 
sionaries. Those w r ho were not present at that 
great convention or have not attended similar 
gatherings can scarcely imagine the inspiration to 
the students present. To watch the intent faces 
of those multitudes of Christian youth as they were 
seated in the great Coliseum listening to the great¬ 
est religious and missionary leaders of the day, or 
to hear them singing with the fervour of youth 
“ The Son of God goes forth to war,” w r as to be 
born anew to the belief in the revolutionary power 
of the intelligent zeal and faith of the Christian 
student. One minor result of such a gathering is 
illustrated by the remark of a young Princeton 
student who said to his associates, “ Well, fellows, 
I know what this means for me; it means that I 
must go back home and evangelize my own father 
‘ in this generation.’ ” 

It is of interest to note that the modern move¬ 
ment for missionary work was the outgrowth of 
a small gathering of college students in an early 
day, upon whose hearts there was dawning a real¬ 
ization of the Church’s obligation to the non-Chris-, 
tian world. At Williamsburg, Mass., a unique 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MORROW 


141 


monument marks the place where, on Saturday 
afternoon in August, 1806, five young fellows,— 
students of Williams College,—met for a prayer 
meeting. The monument is marked “ The birth¬ 
place of American foreign missions/’ and contains 
the names of Samuel J. Mills and his four asso¬ 
ciates who attended what has since been called “the 
haystack prayer meeting.” The story of the meet¬ 
ing is as follows: It was a hot, sultry day, when 
the students started out to a grove where they had 
a daily prayer meeting as a part of the revival 
series then in progress in the college. A sudden 
thunder shower coming up, the boys sought refuge 
under a neighbouring haystack. There their con¬ 
versation turned upon Asia, which the East India 
Company was just opening up. As they discussed 
the moral degradation and spiritual need of that 
continent, Mills proposed the idea of sending the 
Gospel to Asia, saying, “ We can do it, if we will.” 
They then engaged in prayer for this object. All 
these students were active Christians, and their 
first zealous outbursts for the faith were backed 
up by their lifetime labours in telling the Gospel 
story. The memorable “ haystack prayer meet¬ 
ing ” with its far-reaching results is acknowledged 
as the force from which came the American Board 
of Foreign Missions. 

The college years have been the period when 
many a young person has definitely entered the 
Christian life. The venerable Bishop Bowman, of 
the Methodist Church, on being asked when he 
became a Christian said that he was converted at 


142 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Cazenovia Seminary at the age of fifteen, adding 
that a large number of other young people were 
also brought in at that time. Three factors prob¬ 
ably contributed to the conversion of the good 
bishop. First, that parental foresight that selected 
a school for the boy with high moral influences in 
view; and second, the influence of that Christian 
school upon the youth; while as the third agency 
we may name the associates who started with him 
the Christian life, who by their combined purpose 
encouraged one another in their good resolutions. 

The students who have received in any degree 
a spiritual vision in their college years have gone 
out to take their places in the world with profound 
gratitude to the college that has equipped them both 
mentally and spiritually for their task. From both 
state and denominational colleges have come forth 
those whose spiritual service to the world is of 
large worth. John R. Mott, celebrated in mission¬ 
ary annals, is the combined product of the church 
and secular school. Howard H. Russell, founder 
of the Anti-Saloon League, is a graduate of Ober- 
lin; while William E. Goodfellow, who was largely 
instrumental in establishing the public school 
system of Latin America, came from a Christian 
school in southern Michigan. William McKinley 
was a graduate of Alleghany College, and said, 
“ Whatever I have gained in willingness and 
ability to tackle large and hard jobs, I gained at 
that Christian college.” 

The.opportunity of the Christian college student 
to serve his fellows was illustrated in a remarkable 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


143 


way by the experience of one man in the critical 
time of the Boxer uprising in China in 1900. 
Something over forty years ago a young man was 
studying civil engineering in a college in New York 
state. About the time his course was finished he 
gave himself to the foreign service of the Church. 
Some of his friends thought it a strange waste of 
brilliant talents. He spent twenty years in teach¬ 
ing in a Chinese college at Peking. Suddenly the 
Boxer rebellion burst out in the city, and the 
American and European residents were huddled 
together for safety in the British legation. Then 
Frank Gamewell, “ the Yankee missionary,” 
stepped forth, and from his knowledge of civil 
engineering directed the building of fortifications 
and organized the plan of defense. His scientific 
skill made possible the heroic stand which saved 
the lives of the ambassadors of America and 
Europe, the defenseless Chinese Christians, the 
missionaries of both Catholic and Protestant faith, 
and the multitude of no faith whatsoever, and 
showered upon him the heartfelt thanks of a grate¬ 
ful world. 

The college whose ideals are uplifting, whose 
atmosphere is morally stimulating, and whose lead¬ 
ers are Christian, has an outreach which touches 
the far borders of the earth. 


X 


/ 


\ 


HABITS AND AMUSEMENTS 

H ERBERT SPENCER once said, “ By no 
political alchemy can you get golden con¬ 
duct from leaden instincts.” Conduct is 
the manifestation of moral life and this life is the 
sum total of personal habits. Any process of 
education or discipline which ignores the potency 
of habit and association is but a political alchemy 
which is ineffectual in producing golden deeds. 
Lives which constantly travel on low levels will 
never soar upon angel’s wings. Nature is kind 
enough to give wings to carrion birds, and bring 
a butterfly out of a worm, but the best character 
in mankind is only developed in a soul atmosphere 
of purity and nourished by righteous acts. 

The greatest hindrances to the Christian char¬ 
acter of youth are the impediments of evil habits 
and dangerous recreations. The moral problems 
of the adolescent are indicted by their frequent 
questionings concerning behaviour: “ Why can’t 

I-? ” “ What is the harm in-? ” “ Is it 

wrong to-?” The school years, whether of 

high school or college, are especially filled with 
these solicitations to cross the thin ice of forbidden 
rivers. 

In spite of the fact that for many years the 

144 






THE LIFE OF TOMOEROW 


145 


minor youth of the country have been legally safe¬ 
guarded against alcohol, it is a known fact that the 
intemperate habits of many boys were formed long 
before their majority. A reformed drunkard, after 
twenty-nine years of experience with the habit, 
published his story in one of our leading magazines 
a few years since. Among other things mentioned 
he said that his observation showed that fifty per 
cent of saloon patrons in his bibulous days were 
minors. He describes his own experience in be¬ 
ginning the habit as follows: 

“ At fourteen years of age I drank my first glass 
of beer in a saloon in a most natural way. Seeing 
me hot and perspiring one summer afternoon, a 
saloon-keeper offered me a glass of bottled beer, 
saying, ‘ You’re old enough to drink beer now.’ 
. . . I believe the so-called ‘ best people ’ are not 

aware of the fact that drinkers and drunkards are 
originally made by illegal liquor selling to minors. I 
know that the perpetuation of the saloon business is 
based on minors forming the habit of liquor drink¬ 
ing at the earliest possible age.” 

The drink habit has been, and is still to some 
extent, a menace to the student in his school career. 
The high school as well as the college youth has 
suffered in this regard. Some local instances of 
the pernicious influence of drinking students in 
public schools as well as some scientific data gath¬ 
ered by others, affords sufficient proof that the boys 
in secondary schools are not safe from the allure¬ 
ments of intoxicating liquor. Only a few years 
before the saloon was outlawed in this country 


146 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


several of our eastern colleges were having trouble 
with the drinking habits of students. Princeton, 
as well as a number of others, put in force very 
stringent rules against the use of liquor by the 
students, and class dinners were made “ dry ” 
affairs. Just about this time, President Shanklin, 
of Wesleyan University, had a saloon-keeper 
arrested and fined for selling liquor to minor 
students, and later arranged a conference with the 
president of the local liquor dealers’ association in 
which it was agreed that no liquor would hence¬ 
forth be sold to Wesleyan students. 

The friends of youth are not to suppose because 
of past won victories that the young are safe from 
the temptations of appetite. It is probable that 
the per cent of drinkers among the younger genera¬ 
tion is much less than before the liquor traffic was 
outlawed, but a large number of drinkers and boot¬ 
leggers are evidently on the youthful side of life. 
Sheriff Robb, a vigorous young official at Des 
Moines, recently said that much of the liquor 
brought into his state from Canada was clandes¬ 
tinely sold at fabulous prices through the bell-boys 
in the leading hotels of his city. Mr. Robb also 
states that the dope habit has taken a terrible hold 
upon the rising generation. He says that in Des 
Moines alone there are two thousand young people 
who are drug addicts, and that at least twenty 
“ dope dens 99 are in that city. The hopeless condi¬ 
tion of one who has been overtaken by this habit is 
shown by the case of a young man who would come 
into the court and ask for a sentence of three weeks 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 147 


that he might get straight again. After a recent 
imprisonment the sheriff told him he had better 
take another week and make sure that he was free 
from the dope. At the end of that week he was let 
out, supposing himself to be free from the habit. 
But he was back in three weeks as bad as ever. 
This has occurred three times. Of all who have 
been treated for the habit, Mr. Robb says that but 
one—a young woman—is holding out. 

In the thought of many who have considered 
the relation of youth and the habits of appetite, 
the use of strong drink and drugs is closely as¬ 
sociated with tobacco. Dr. Charles B. Towns, in 
the Century Magazine 9 makes the following state¬ 
ment: 

“ The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of 
cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. 
For years I have been dealing with alcoholism and 
morphinism; have gone into their every phase and 
aspect, have kept minute details of between six and 
seven thousand cases, and I have never seen a case, 
except occasionally with women, which did not have 
a history of excessive tobacco. ... A boy al¬ 
ways begins smoking before he begins drinking. If 
he is disposed to drink, that disposition will be in¬ 
creased by smoking, because the action of tobacco 
makes it normal for him to feel the need of stimula¬ 
tion. He is likely to go to alcohol to soothe the mus¬ 
cular unrest, to blunt the irritation he has received 
from tobacco. From alcohol he goes to morphine 
for the same reason. . . . Morphine is the legit¬ 

imate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the 
legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, 
drink, opium, is the logical and regular series.” 


148 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


It is the personal belief of the writer that no 
more regrettable thing has occurred to youth in the 
past generation than the popularization of the 
cigarette in the recent World War. Boys in the 
teens who had formerly been shielded from tobacco 
were suddenly taken from the pure atmosphere of 
Christian homes and introduced to the smoke-laden 
atmosphere of the army camp, and made to feel 
that since they were engaged in a man-sized job 
they could indulge in every manhood vice. Chris¬ 
tian people, among them many good motherly 
souls,—who would not have done such a thing on 
their own account,—became, through a false notion 
of patriotism, agents of the American tobacco 
trust, and through the Red Cross and kindred 
organizations urged the cigarette upon the Ameri¬ 
can soldier with a persistency which would have 
been worthy a better cause. The sale of ciga¬ 
rettes increased nearly fifty per cent in the year 
1917, and still continues to grow. The laws pro¬ 
hibiting the use and sale of cigarettes in many 
states—though not well enforced previously—have 
either been changed, repealed, or constantly disre¬ 
garded, and the established facts concerning the 
deleterious effect of tobacco seem to have been 
forgotten. 

Educators and social workers speak with no 
uncertain sound however concerning the serious 
physical, mental, and moral effects of tobacco, and 
the cigarette especially. An examination of the 
grades of students in the Ohio Wesleyan Uni¬ 
versity, conducted by Dean W. G. Hormell in the 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


149 


years 1911 to 1913, shows that during these two 
college years sixteen per cent of the high grades 
and fifty-two and three-eighths per cent of the low 
grades were obtained by the smokers, while eighty- 
four per cent of the high grades and forty-seven 
and five-eighths per cent of the low grades were 
obtained by non-smokers. Testimony of like char¬ 
acter comes from numerous college authorities. 
Dr. Henry Churchill King, when president of 
Oberlin College, said: “ I am entirely clear in my 
own mind that the use of tobacco, at least by men 
under twenty-five, is to be vigorously opposed, 
partly on considerations of health, partly on con¬ 
siderations of intellectual development, and partly 
on moral considerations.” 

Just how prevalent are questionable and immoral 
habits in community and public school life to-day 
we cannot be sure. A school superintendent in a 
certain western city, known as a center of educa¬ 
tion and moral culture, said recently that the pupils 
of the schools down to the first grade were indulg¬ 
ing in cigarettes. A chief of police, commenting 
on the laxity of morals among the young boys and 
girls of his city, said: “ More trouble comes from 
the unchaperoned automobile ride, especially late at 
night, than from all other irregularities combined.” 
Prof. Jesse B. Davis, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, 
gives the results of a discreet investigation con¬ 
ducted by a student committee in a certain high 
school composed of six hundred and fourteen boys, 
as follows: thirteen and seven-tenths per cent were 
habitual smokers, while thirty-two and seven-tenths 


150 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


per cent occasionally indulged; twenty-four per 
cent engaged in gambling games of various sorts; 
nine and one-tenth per cent were guilty of drinking 
liquor—most of whom learned to drink in their 
own homes; ten and nine-tenths per cent wasted 
time in questionable resorts; three and two-tenths 
per cent were impure in personal and social rela¬ 
tions. 

The various habits which undermine character 
have a close association with each other. Liquor 
and lust are twin sisters. The pockets of a moral 
degenerate usually contain a deck of cards and a 
plug of tobacco. The realization that bad habits 
do team work in their attack upon the youth im¬ 
presses us with the necessity of an effort for the 
elimination of the whole company of evil spirits 
that seek to inhabit the citadel of Boy Soul. Re¬ 
garding the overcoming of the prevalent boyhood 
vice, the tobacco habit, let us hear from one who 
has interested himself in the boy as an educator 
and friend through many years,—William A. 
McKeever, of the department of Child Welfare in 
Kansas State University. Professor McKeever 
tells a striking story of a boy who was struggling 
to get free from the cigarette habit. “ One night at 
9: 30 I went to the door in response to a feeble 
rap, and admitted a pale, sixteen-year-old boy, who 
said, ‘ Professor, dogged if I don't want you to 
hypnotize me. I smoke four cigarettes in bed 
every night and about fifty every day,—and I can’t 
quit.’ I tried to hypnotize the dejected youth, but 
failed. It was an easy matter however to stir him 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 151 


emotionally, and as a result of my efforts he sprang 
to his feet, drew out his ‘ makings' and presented 
them to me, pipe, tobacco and all. ‘ I am done 
with this forever! ’ he cried. Whereupon he seized 
the pipe—an expensive one—broke it, and threw 
the pieces out into the darkness. * I will let out 
my blood with my own knife before I’ll ever smoke 
again/ he exclaimed. ‘ Oh, I wish my mother 
were here/ ” 

The sequel of the incident is the melancholy part 
of it all. With the weakened will of the drug 
addict the boy met the old cravings the next day 
and fell again; borrowing the “ makings ” he took 
a big smoke, for then nothing else seemed reason¬ 
able to him. Professor McKeever says, “ The 
more I work with these confirmed cases the more I 
am convinced of the futility of attempting a com¬ 
plete permanent cure. ... No ordinary youth 
confirmed in the habit can break it off without the 
help of some very strong outside influence, and then 
the struggle will be a desperate one.” 

In dealing with the youth concerning this and 
other dangerous habits the most effective campaign 
is a preventive one. An educational campaign 
should be launched, backed by all the Christian and 
educational forces. With pulpit and press and 
parent on the side of clean habits and with a clear 
note of teaching and example on the part of school 
instructors the youth will be turned to the right 
path and saved from some of the habits that now 
seem so prevalent. A very effective moving pic¬ 
ture film can be obtained for free use from the 


152 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Battle Creek Sanitarium, which gives the most 
complete scientific facts regarding the tobacco evil. 
The appeal most effective with the youth will 
doubtless be the physical appeal. Instances may 
be cited to the growing boy of athletes who abstain 
for the good of their bodies,—that they may be on 
the winning side. Scientific data such as that 
gathered at Yale College, where during nine years’ 
study of the students it was found that the lung 
capacity of non-smokers developed seventy-seven 
per cent more than that of smokers, may be given. 
While the moral exhortation should not be neg¬ 
lected, the challenge to the physical will often 
prove a more effective deterrent than a standard 
of moral excellence. 

The manhood vices and the moral victories are 
largely the result of the social environment. What 
is customary on the part of chums, and what is 
popular in “ our set,” fixes the standard of living 
for many a youth despite any moral pleas which 
may be uttered by teacher or friend. With this 
suggestion as an aid to a campaign against youth¬ 
ful follies or a constructive program of moral 
effectiveness, the modern worker with young people 
will understand that the amusement life of youth 
is the field that must be his first conquest. Happily 
for the youth of to-day the Church is awaking 
to the religious importance of the recreational life. 
The play life has come into a new heritage during 
the past few years which has resulted in a con¬ 
structive program of play activities which has rev¬ 
olutionized the Church’s approach to the young. 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


153 


The moral value of play has appealed to municipal¬ 
ities in such a way that our large cities have ap¬ 
propriated millions of dollars for play advantages. 
The colleges and public schools—which were 
pioneers in recognizing the value of athletic sports 
to their students—have given themselves to an even 
larger appreciation of the physical and recreational 
side of life. 

This new awakening to the value of the play 
life has produced a literature which is voluminous. 
Several years ago when this author wrote a book 
on the character value of play, there were few 
books treating the question and the searching of 
a number of large public libraries produced little 
except periodical literature as a stimulus to the 
development of the thought of that study of the 
play question. The literature published by the 
Church was largely of the negative sort, and that 
of the school and the municipality was not yet 
crystallized into bound volumes. As a pioneer in 
the treatment of the moral value of play, the writer 
has witnessed with much satisfaction the change 
of attitude on the part of the Church, and the re¬ 
sulting larger hold upon the heart and sympathy 
of young life. But with all this, we must guard 
ourselves from the danger of any excesses which 
shall impress our youth with the idea that the 
supreme purpose in life is simply to have a good 
time. A reasonable consideration of the effect of 
the pleasure program upon the life will appeal as 
well to the fair-minded and conscientious youth. 

As an instance of the discrimination of Chris- 


154 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


tian youth concerning amusement features it may 
be mentioned that the Christian Endeavour Society, 
gathered in state convention at Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, adopted strong resolutions against the 
showing of moving pictures of the great prize¬ 
fight at Reno, Nevada, which were reechoed in a 
state convention at Milwaukee. This started a 
movement which went through the states and was 
even taken up by the authorities of Cape Town, 
Calcutta, and Melbourne, and was noted in the 
English parliament as well. 

Somewhat of an idea of the opposite spirit which 
yields to the corrupt standards of a morally care¬ 
less environment may be gathered from the follow¬ 
ing letter of a young girl: 

“ On the evening of May 14 th a girl friend and I 
went for an auto ride with two young men. On the 
way home the young man sitting with me suddenly 
took hold of me and kissed me twice. No great 
crime according to modern custom—but what dread¬ 
ful results were to follow! I continued in good health 
until about June 25 , when I noticed a lymph gland 
enlarged under the right side of my jaw. . . . 

Early in July I noticed a sore on my upper lip. It 
grew considerably larger and caused considerable 
pain when eating. The 21 st of July the upper lip 
became greatly swollen. Three days later, the gland 
having shown no decrease in size, I consulted my 
physician. . . . Wasserman reported four plus, 

and the sore on my lip pronounced chancre. . . .” 

The medical man, to whom this confession was 
made, says concerning the young lady’s statement 
that the kiss was “ no great crime,”—“ It did prove 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


155 


a very great crime however. It inflicted the 
foolish young woman with syphilis/’ The doctor 
then says, “ Kissing is all very well to make jokes 
about. Nevertheless a girl who permits such 
liberty on the part of any man not engaged to her 
is foolish/ 

The youth of both sexes will do well to be care¬ 
ful concerning the games and plays which magnify 
unduly the sex element. The social dance has, in 
the minds of many who are interested in youth, 
this objection. Ancient dances—which were 
patriotic and religious in character—were danced 
by the sexes separately. The modern dance is 
quite different from its progenitors, and there are 
not a few who note its deleterious moral effects. 
Many will be found to agree with Superintendent 
Mortenson, of the Chicago high schools, when he 
says in his “ standards of conduct ” recently set 
forth: “We believe that the modem method of 
dancing has done much to break down respect for 
womanhood/ Without doubt the larger number 
of those who engage in present day social dancing 
do so without a single improper thought; but all 
social workers admit the element of danger con¬ 
nected with the dance, especially if the gathering 
have no safeguards as to personnel and environ¬ 
ment. 

No doubt the most important amusement to-day 
—even more popular than the social dance—is the 
moving picture show. The industry has grown by 
leaps and bounds so far as investment, number of 
theaters, and size of audience is concerned. No 


156 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


statistics of yesterday concerning these items can 
be considered as representative to-day. From the 
beginning the “ movies ” were popular with young 
life. The element of surprise, the near miraculous, 
and the constant activity and variety of the screen 
show, make strong appeal to the imaginative and 
wide-awake youth. Numerous questionnaires have 
shown the large attendance of children at these 
shows. 

Frequent notes of warning are sounded concern¬ 
ing the effect of the moving picture shows on the 
morals of the rising generation. The suggestions 
contained in some pictures have doubtless had, in 
some instances, a bad effect upon young life. A 
demand for a national censorship of picture films 
has been heard for some time past. No doubt 
this demand, as well as certain disclosures concern¬ 
ing the character of leading actors, had much to 
do with the hiring of the new dictator for the 
picture interests,—Mr. Will H. Hays—from 
whose supervision it is hoped the moral conditions 
of the picture industry may be much improved. 
Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, of the International Reform 
Bureau, who insistently advocated federal control, 
favoured a commission similar to the interstate 

i 

commerce commission, with men of the quality of 
the Supreme Court, to comprise a national board 
of censorship. The noted reformer said: “ My 
observation is that motion pictures are too power¬ 
ful an interest for either state or city censorship 
to handle effectively;—it is the fifth largest in¬ 
dustry in the country in money power, and it is 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


157 


second only to the liquor traffic in its effort to 
dominate civic bodies in its own interest.” 

Whether we shall adopt this view of the case or 
not, we recognize that the power of moral dis¬ 
crimination is left to us,—in the absence of any 
legal discriminating power. From an attitude 
that at first was unfriendly to the motion picture 
show many have come to see its value as a means 
of instruction and amusement, and in the larger 
cities at least the variety of pictures shown is such 
that usually one can select a picture of real merit 
for their enjoyment. With the increase of a de¬ 
mand for the better class of films quite a wide 
variety of pictures of a moral and educational 
character are now offered by the producers. The 
Y. M. C. A. and the public school have used the 
films as an adjunct of their work for a long time 
past, and the popularity of the moving picture in 
the church is increasing daily. 

The discrimination necessary in the selection of 
the motion picture, either for exhibition or per¬ 
sonal enjoyment, applies to other forms of amuse¬ 
ment as well. It is possible for the youth to choose 
his pleasures with a view to what is best for his 
personal need, just as he would choose his reading 
or his food. It may be interesting to note the 
effort of an expert to provide a scientific test for 
our amusements. Mr. Edward Purinton, an 
efficiency expert connected with The Independent 
(N. Y.), published an elaborate chart a few years 
ago in which the desirable and undesirable con¬ 
ditions were indicated by either plus or minus 


158 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


marks—the neutral being marked O—and the re¬ 
sult added to indicate the character of the form of 
amusement. The tabulation was in the following 
form—only a small part of the chart being given 
here: 


Actual 

Condition 

Hostile 

Ideal 

Condition 

Favourable 

Tennis 

Cards 

» 

Dance 

Alountain 

Hike 

Noise 

Silence 

0 

0 

— 

X 

Hurry 

Leisure 

— 

0 

— 

X 

Regularity 

Spontaneity 

X 

0 

X 

0 

Confinement 

Outdoor 

X 

— 

— 

X 

Expense 

Saving 

X 

X 

0 

X 

Insomnia 

Sound Sleep 

X 

— 

0 

X 

Brain Fag 

Relaxation 

X 

— 

— 

X 


Totals, 

5x 

lx 

lx 

6x 



1— 

3— 

4— 



Value, 

4x 

2— 

3— 

6x 


It is more than likely however that the strong¬ 
est factor in deciding the character of the amuse¬ 
ments of youth is the amount of influence—either 
good or bad—exercised by some companion or 
friend. In fact the whole tenor of life is affected 
in such a large degree by associates that considera¬ 
tions of lover or sweetheart are often the deciding 
factors in life’s most critical situations. There is 
room for a complete treatise on the subject of how 
marriage affects character,—but the limits of our 
theme forbid more than a passing suggestion. The 
recreational life offers youth’s largest opportunity 






























































IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


159 


for meeting and making love, and the character of 
the future husband and wife and of the home to be 
is often determined by the type of social pleasures 
enjoyed, and the surroundings of the recreational 
life. 

The character of the boy life of a community is 
moulded in large degree by the moral ideals of the 
girls. Women and girls who look upon the vices 
of men with tacit approval will accomplish little 
toward raising the standard of the world’s man¬ 
hood. A pastor who was called to conduct the 
funeral services of a farmer who had passed away 
after a lingering illness, leaving an only son—an 
ungainly youth—tells of a conversation with the 
boy on their way to the home. The boy, dressed 
in an ill-fitting suit of black, was sitting in silence 
by the preacher’s side. The minister respected the 
silence, believing that the boy was thinking of the 
dead. But at last the youth spoke of a subject 
far different: 

“ So Mabel is married.” 

Mabel was a beautiful and popular girl who had 
taught the district school the year before, and 
whom the preacher had recently married to a young 
farmer. 

“ Yes,” said the preacher, “ they were married at 
the parsonage.” 

Again there was a silence, and then the boy spoke 
again: “I—I—loved her, elder; but I ought to 
have knowed she was too good for me.” 

The preacher waited for the boy to continue, 
and pretty soon he said, “ She made me a Chris- 


160 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


tian, Mabel did. I used to drive over to Walton 
with her to hear you preach, and on our way home 
she would talk to me about the Christian life. One 
Sunday she got me to decide. I gev up terbacker, 
too, for her,” he went on. “ It was awful hard, 
for I smoked all the time. The first night I was 
so afraid the boys would ask me where my pipe was 
that I went to bed as soon as I’d done my chores. 
But I knowed it would please her. I don’t smoke 
now. I hope she’s got a good husband that’ll be 
kind to her.” 

The eyes of both the preacher and the boy were 
dimmed with tears, as after an interval Bert said 
one more thing, “ I tell you, elder, these girls don’t 
know what they can do. It’s a shame so many of 
’em don’t half try.” 


XI 


YOUTH AND THE COMMUNITY 

f I >HE relative influence of education and en¬ 
vironment on character is still a debated 
JL question. Concerning the “ best place ” 
in which to raise a boy or girl there is still a wide 
divergence of opinion. Once it was a foregone 
conclusion that the rural life—more preferably the 
open country—contributed to the best character. 
But the changed home life of the present day, and 
the deterioration of church and school facilities in 
rural communities, have begun to shake the faith 
of those who formerly thought of the country life 
as a safe refuge from moral harm. 

The city has had a bad moral reputation. The 
polyglot population, the opportunity for evil to hide 
itself away among the mass of inhabitants, the 
strong commercial instincts,—these things have 
been conducive to a reputation for an evil moral 
atmosphere. However, in the modern city are 
found forces that operate for good,—especially in 
the life of the young,—which are often quite lack¬ 
ing in the smaller community, while the open 
country is quite destitute of such moral ministries. 

The small town has probably had a better moral 
standing in popular thought than it deserves. So 
far as its attitude toward youth is concerned, it has 

161 



162 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


often been very negative if not positively harmful. 
As one who has spent the larger part of his life 
in the small town, the writer wishes to register his 
protest against the indifference of the average rural 
community to its most valuable human product—- 
youth. 

Wherever we find young life—in country, town, 
or city—it behooves us that the conditions of living 
shall be made so uplifting and inspiring that the 
boy or girl may have the feeling of Plutarch who 
said, “ I live in a little town, where I am willing 
to continue, lest it should grow less.” If the city 
be his home, it may so impress its individuality 
upon the boy that he shall share the spirit of 
Wendell Phillips in his high ideal for his home 
town when he said, “ I love inexpressibly these 
streets of Boston over whose pavements my mother 
held up tenderly my baby feet, and if God grants 
me time enough I will make them too pure to bear 
the footsteps of a slave.” 

Modern treatises on city building fill many pages 
with a consideration of the material elements; such 
as wide boulevards, beautiful architecture, and 
the machinery of government,—and pathetically 
enough devote little space to the development of 
the future Plutarchs or Phillips’s that shall arise 
from the city’s multitudinous youth to people their 
palaces and walk their streets. It is a fine testi¬ 
monial to the people of Kansas that a state-wide 
contest was recently put on in their state to decide 
which town could qualify as the best place in which 
to raise children. A prize of one thousand dollars 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


163 


was offered in 1915 by ex-Governor W. R. Stubbs 
and wife, and a second prize of five hundred dollars 
by Mr. Charles A. Horner, of Kansas City. A 
board of examiners was appointed by Dr. W. A. 
McKeever, of the state university, and a rigid ex¬ 
amination of the social, educational, and religious 
qualifications of the contesting towns and cities 
took place. Secret, as well as open, investigations 
were carried on. After due consideration Winfield 
received the first prize, and Independence stood 
second. The appreciation of the public in this 
quest for a good community life is shown, in some 
degree at least, that since the award was given 
people have moved to Winfield in such numbers 
that the city schools are overcrowded with pupils. 
A similar contest was recently conducted in Okla¬ 
homa, with the result that Shawnee took first place 
and received a large prize as a reward. 

It may be said of communities as well as nations 
that the proper evaluation of its youth fixes the 
standard of a people’s moral advancement. A man 
who had widely traveled said that he could judge 
the character of any community by one unfailing 
rule. When he went into a town and saw a well- 
kept cemetery, while on the other hand the school 
buildings were poor and illy-furnished, he knew 
that he was among a people whose face was toward 
the past. If the school buildings were well built 
and had a look of prosperity and the graveyard 
ill-kept, he knew the citizens had forgotten the past 
and were facing toward the future. 

It is not necessary that we should think lightly 


164 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


of the aged or be found wanting in the respect due 
the dead in order to have a proper appreciation of 
youth, but it is essential that a forward-looking 
people shall have due consideration of its debt to 
the rising generation. The future is wrapped up 
in the present, and without future resources in 
citizenship and morals both town and country will 
be bankrupt both in ethics and efficiency. As an 
American statesman once said, “ We must not 
grind the seed corn.” 

The forces which undermine youthful character 
are often allowed to flourish in our American com¬ 
munities with the full knowledge of the officers of 
the law and others who are morally—if not legally 
—responsible for the well-being of the growing 
youth. A common curse of the small town is 
often manifest in a secret ring of poker enthusiasts 
who make it their business to entangle young boys 
of prosperous families who are easily fleeced by the 
more expert gambler, while the foundations of 
future depredations are laid by these designing 
craftsmen of the underworld. The public pool 
hall has also proved the ruination of many a boy 
in the smaller towns. A young man condemned to 
a penitentiary sentence a few years ago, said in 
some words of advice to young men, “ Keep away 
from the pool rooms. Get a job that involves hard 
work. I played ‘ cinches ’ all my life; now look at 
me.” The small town is the picking ground for 
the panderer of the city brothel. A prominent 
social worker makes the statement that 68,000 
young girls in the United States disappeared during 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


165 


1919. A white slaver confessed in a New York 
court: “ All we have to do is to keep an eye on the 
little towns and find out when a girl decides to go 
to the city to get a job. Girls in small towns are 
always eager to leave home for that purpose. 
When they arrive in the city we are watching for 
them.” 

The slums of the great cities are fed by the 
smaller communities. In a series of articles 
published in Charities and Commons, Jacob Riis 
said that in cities small and large there are the 
same social problems growing which he had found 
in New York City. He made an earnest plea that 
these communities “ head off the slum ” by giving 
attention to their local situation. The grinding 
poverty and ravaging disease of the village slum 
often furnish as tragic incidents as can be related 
by any city social worker. In a small eastern town 
a washerwoman’s son had been sent to a reforma¬ 
tory for a trivial offense, but when stricken with 
disease was sent home to die. As a helpless in¬ 
valid he was left day after day with only the com¬ 
pany of a smaller boy while the mother went out 
to work. The last week of his life, while he was 
wasting away with the dreaded white plague, the 
mother was away from home every day. The baby 
boy would follow his mother to the door and say, 
“ Ferdie will take care of me, mamma; don’t cry.” 
The little fellow would crawl up into the sick boy’s 
arms and sit quietly while the older boy told him 
weird stories in a whispering voice. On the last 
day the baby came to the door to meet his mother 


166 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


when she returned from work, saying, “ Ferdie’s 
asleep, mamma; but he saw angels with white 
wings in the room all the afternoon, and talked to 
them. He told them he was so tired, mamma,— 
and so am I.” Only a few months later the angels 
with the white wings came after the little fellow 
also; and thus two children of the slums were 
added to the city of the dead. 

The moral and physical safety of the rising gen¬ 
eration is not regulated by the size of the com¬ 
munity, so much as by the spirit of the adult popu¬ 
lation concerning youth. A great nation-wide 
effort for the appreciation of child life—the recent 
“ Children’s Year ”—has assisted in awakening 
interest in the young. The interest aroused in rec¬ 
reational life by the Playground and Recreation 
Association of America, and the activities of both 
the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. have had an influence 
in raising the community estimate of childhood. 
In the line of church agencies the week-day school 
of religious education is perhaps the most impor¬ 
tant venture in the spiritual development of the 
community’s youth. 

The best known effort for the religious training 
of the child as a community project is the so-called 
“ Gary plan ” of week-day religious teaching. Mr. 
William Wirt, superintendent of the schools of 
Gary, Indiana, worked out a plan to include re¬ 
ligious instruction as a part of the regular study 
of each child in school. He consulted with the 
pastors of the churches and told them he would 
excuse from the school session for one hour each 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 167 


day, every pupil whose parents might request it, in 
order that they might be systematically instructed 
in the Bible and religious faith. The classes 
organized by church agencies as a result of this 
plan met for a time in the various church buildings, 
and were taught the tenets of their own peculiar 
faith by instructors provided by denominational 
authorities. An interdenominational plan has more 
recently been taken up and the pupils are taught at 
a common meeting place. The courses of study 
as adopted are submitted to the school superintend¬ 
ent for his approval, but no school credit is given 
for the work. 

Many similar plans of religious instruction have 
since been adopted in cities and villages through the 
country from New York and Chicago to com¬ 
munities of only a few hundred population. Va¬ 
cation Bible schools, with a varied course of play, 
manual training, and religion, are also becoming 
more popular every year, and the foundation of 
a community religious life is being laid by these 
efforts which will in time leaven the national 
character in a most marked way. 

Unfortunately, many of these efforts for the 
betterment of youth have not yet reached the open 
country. The Y. M. C. A. has extended its work 
to rural fields, and county secretaries are now con¬ 
ducting recreational and Bible study work which 
is of real help to many boys of the country dis¬ 
tricts. This work is essentially a community 
effort, in which the secretary enlists prominent in¬ 
dividuals of the country town or neighbourhood in 


168 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


practical work for the boys. One who writes of 
this work in a Detroit paper says: 

“ Twenty-five or thirty business and professional 
men compose an executive committee outlining a 
county policy under which homes, churches, and 
schools work harmoniously, while cooperating sub¬ 
committees and leaders of groups, all volunteers, are 
trained and directed by the County Secretary. To 
his aid he summons state officials, professors from 
the Michigan Agricultural College, the University of 
Michigan and other state institutions, as well as State 
and International Association experts/’ 

This work has been slowly established and built 
for permanency rather than spectacular results. 
One secretary, in answer to a criticism about the 
seeming failure to accomplish much during the 
first year of the work, said, “ You can’t expect me 
to undo in one year what you and the devil have 
done in twenty-five years.” The state of Michigan, 
where this work seems to have reached its widest 
extension, averages in its various counties between 
2,000 and 2,500 between the ages of twelve to six¬ 
teen and eighteen years. Owing to the widely 
separated localities of residence the plan of having 
the county as the unit of operation makes possible 
the assistance of an expert in boys’ work whose 
influence can be felt in every community in de¬ 
veloping local leadership for boys, as well as help¬ 
ing a large number of the young fellows by his 
own personal presence. The results of this work 
are said to be amply repaying the effort. 

A remarkably interesting feature of the work of 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


169 


the Y. M. C. A. for the high school boys of the 
larger communities is the “ Hi Y ” club. It was 
my privilege to see the beginnings of the first build¬ 
ing erected in the United States by the Association 
for this work. On a corner near the beautiful 
new high school building in the city of Lincoln, 
Nebraska, was an unsightly one-story lunch room 
and candy shop where many of the high school 
boys used to loaf between sessions and spend their 
father’s money for chocolates and cigarettes,—and 
possibly engage in sports which civic and moral 
laws would classify as greater crimes. A liberal 
gift from the father of one of the boys—a 
wealthy automobile dealer in the city—made possi¬ 
ble the buying of the lot on which the questionable 
rendezvous was located, and the building of an 
attractive brick building thereon as a Christian club 
house for the boys. Several years have elapsed 
since the beginning of this work, and now a recent 
report of the activities of this club during a three 
months’ period shows that the special secretary in 
charge has held one hundred and forty-three inter¬ 
views with boys and organized fifty-five boys in 
Bible classes, while the daily attendance of boys at 
the club rooms has averaged two hundred. 

A variety of organizations of a community char¬ 
acter are doing work for and with the children and 
the youth, but the highest results are not attained 
nor is the young person for whom they are organ¬ 
ized fully satisfied if the effort is resolved into a 
mere passive treatment. Youth longs for self-ex¬ 
pression and self-activity. What youth can do for 


170 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


the community is fully as important—even more 
important, from the standpoint of the youth him¬ 
self—than what all community agencies may do 
for him. The practical test of any program of 
assistance is found in what it has inspired the youth 
to do for others. A boy who printed and cir¬ 
culated an original poem on election day when the 
question of saloon license was up for decision in 
his village, felt that he had had an important part 
in the victory when the “ dry ” ticket won. A 
lesson of character value came out of the efforts 
of the school pupils in Decatur, Illinois, when they 
turned the waste paper of their city into a consider¬ 
able sum of money for the benefit of their schools. 
Fifteen public and parochial schools cooperated, 
and nearly fifty-three tons of waste paper was col¬ 
lected, netting $1,014. During the World War 
the Boy Scouts distinguished themselves for their 
activity and achievements in selling liberty bonds. 

The same spirit which prompts the loyalty of 
the boy to the Church, the school and the nation 
may also be enlisted in his adherence to the town in 
wdiich he lives if the community will show an 
appreciation of boy life and ideals. A great bank¬ 
ing house in a capital city in the middle west, where 
Boy Scout troops are numerous, recently mani¬ 
fested its interest in boy life by a large display 
advertisement in a leading daily: 

“ Every Boy Scout in the city is invited to be pres¬ 
ent at our apple and doughnut party at 7:30 p. m., 
Wednesday, Nov. 9 th, in our banking rooms. Your 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


171 


troop is coming—see your scoutmaster. Be on time, 
don’t miss the fun.” 

As an investment of sociability and friendly 
interest in the growing boy it is a fine testimony 
to the far-sightedness of the great banking house 
that sent out such an invitation. As a means of 
enlisting the boys in the interest of civic improve¬ 
ment a school superintendent in a western city has 
proposed a junior civic and industrial league which 
any boy in the fifth grade or above may join by 
committing to memory and accepting the following 
“ Ephebic Oath ” : 

“ We will never bring disgrace to this city by any 
act of dishonesty or cowardice. We will fight for 
the ideals and sacred things of the city both alone and 
with the many. We will revere and obey the city’s 
laws and do our best to inculcate a like respect and 
reverence in those above us who are prone to annul 
or set them at naught. We will strive unceasingly 
to quicken the public sense of civic duty. Thus in 
all these ways will we transmit this city not only not 
less but greater, better, and more beautiful than it 
was transmitted to us.” 

As an inspiration to high ideals of citizenship and 
personal life perhaps no organizations have done 
more for boys and girls than the Boy Scouts and 
Camp Fire Girls. Though these clubs are often 
administered in connection with the church and 
Sunday school, they are primarily community or¬ 
ganizations. Where there is no church to stand 
behind the endeavour there should be enough 


172 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Christian sentiment in the community to see that 
the leaders of the groups as well as the member¬ 
ship are true to the principles of the Scout law as 
to cleanness, reverence, and loyalty. The Boy 
Scouts are not afraid to be of service to the com¬ 
munity, and when occasion offers they should have 
opportunity to contribute to the success of local 
enterprises. The city of Lincoln, Nebraska, a few 
years ago celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and as 
an assistance to the police three hundred Boy 
Scouts were gathered from over the state to act as 
guides for the visitors, clear the streets for the 
parade, and form a volunteer force which was a 
pronounced help in every part of the celebration. 
In one county seat town in Iowa where the books 
were to be moved from the old court house to the 
new the Scouts were put in charge of the work 
and the valuable records of over seventy years were 
carried to their new vaults by long lines of Scout 
workers during a full day of arduous labour. 

The young girl who desires to live a life worth 
while is cheered and inspired with the thought of 
the common duties of life, as well as the larger 
ideals of citizenship, by such organizations as the 
Camp Fire Girls, the Girl Scouts, and others of 
like character. It sometimes happens that the 
Church has been neglectful in providing a worth¬ 
while program for its young people in this regard. 
Girls, as well as boys, want tasks equal to their 
abilities, or even beyond them. Jane Addams says: 

“ Of the dozens of young women who have begged 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 173 


me to make a connection for them between their 
dreams of social usefulness and actual living, one 
of whom I had sent back to her clergyman, returned 
with this remark, * His only suggestion was that I 
should be responsible every Sunday for fresh flowers 
upon the altar. I did that when I was fifteen and 
liked it then, but when you have come back from col¬ 
lege and are twenty-two years old, it doesn’t quite 
fit in with the vigorous efforts you have been told are 
necessary in order to make our social relations more 
Christian.’ ” 

The community life furnishes something in the 
way of attractive work in the Woman’s Clubs and 
societies with which even our small towns are so 
well supplied, but a very needy field is open in 
every small town for recreational and religious 
work with youth that ought to appeal to the college- 
trained young man or woman. 

The renaissance of the play life which has come 
to our communities may be regulated and used by 
the leader of the youth to-day for the proper char¬ 
acter effect, if he will but note the trend of the 
times. If the “ little theater ” movement seems to 
be inclining youth to a purposeless rendering of 
insipid and trashy plays, it is possible for the 
Christian leader of youth to turn the dramatic 
instinct toward the production of pageants and 
plays which shall have a more direct moral and 
intellectual trend. The author remembers with 
pleasure—and yet with memories of the hard work 
and anxious hours—the putting on of “ The Court¬ 
ship of Miles Standish ” as a church entertainment 
which aroused the interest of the entire community. 


174 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Nearly fifty young people were employed in the 
cast and the occasion showed what might be ac¬ 
complished in serious pageantry in a community 
way. Another occasion long to be remembered is 
a Fourth of July celebration which had as its 
distinctive feature a pageant illustrating the various 
epochs of American history. The author’s personal 
experience in representing Hiawatha in the “ Pass¬ 
ing of the Red Man ”—a most impressive scene— 
will remain forever imprinted on his memory. In 
several churches the author has used cantatas and 
pageants of religious subjects with good effect. The 
story of Bethlehem and the Christ-child acted by 
both “ teen age ” and adult pupils has given a 
religious flavour to the Christmas celebration often 
lacking in the old-time miscellaneous program, and 
added as well to its entertainment and educational 
value. 

Closely associated with the pictorial representa¬ 
tions of pageantry, we naturally call to mind the 
influence of the moving picture as a community 
asset. The absolute lack of censorship in the aver¬ 
age town has given free rein to the moving picture 
men, and the moral forces of the community often 
feel quite at a loss to secure any reform in this 
popular public entertainment. Positive efforts, 
rather than a negative and condemnatory attitude, 
may often accomplish something in the way of an 
improvement in these local conditions. A few 
years ago a woman in one of our Iowa county 
seat towns was instrumental in organizing a 
“ Better Film Movement ” in her city. Representa- 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


175 


tives of all the organizations of the city,—the Com¬ 
mercial Club, the Miners’ Union, the Federation of 
Woman’s Clubs, the railroad men, the ministerial 
association, as well as the W. C. T. U. and the 
Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. and other organizations,—a 
committee of about thirty-five in number—asso¬ 
ciated themselves to secure better movies for their 
city. They were not organized as a board of 
censors, but that they might recommend various 
films to the theaters of the city, with the promise of 
their personal endorsement and combined influence 
in securing the attention of the public to such films. 
Their recommendations were respected by some of 
the producers of the city, and correspondingly large 
audiences greeted the plays endorsed by the com¬ 
mittee. 

Many of the smaller towns have had their recrea¬ 
tional life changed for the better by the erection of 
community houses which have done for the rural 
neighbourhood what the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. 
buildings do for city youth. Some rural churches 
have effectively reinstated themselves as a com¬ 
munity asset by the investment of money and 
energy in such an enterprise. Personally, this 
writer believes that such buildings are never better 
safeguarded from the introduction of harmful 
amusements than when under the control of the 
Christian Church. 

Probably the most prominent opportunity for 
community betterment along recreational lines is 
afforded by the municipal playgrounds now so gen¬ 
erally adopted throughout the country. Informa- 


176 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


tion recently sent out by the Playground and 
Recreation Association of America tabulates re¬ 
ports from five hundred and five cities in the United 
States showing 4,600 playground and recreation 
centers, with nearly 20,000 paid directors and lead¬ 
ers of the work. Officers of the Juvenile Court 
have repeatedly testified that the playground is a 
wonderful deterrent to youthful crime. As an 
instance of what it means to youth to be without 
play opportunities it is worthy of note that in the 
“ Hell’s Kitchens” neighbourhood of New York 
City it was discovered that of one hundred and 
ninety-three delinquents before the Juvenile 
Court the play motive was the underlying cause 
of the misdemeanour in one hundred and eighty- 
four cases. An opportunity for legitimate 
play reduces crime as shown by a careful com¬ 
parison of crime statistics in neighbourhoods 
with and without play facilities. The chief of 
police of San Francisco testifies that the establish¬ 
ment of recreation centers is an effective measure in 
suppressing the crime wave. The playground 
directors of Bay City, Michigan, say that they have 
made the discovery that summer activities on the 
playground have practically eliminated all swear¬ 
ing, cheating, and stealing among children. 

The community that realizes that youth is its 
most priceless possession will not hesitate to give 
childhood its normal rights in the life of play. 
It is still a long way to perfect conditions in the 
matter of the community provision for play, and 
the exhortation sent out by the Municipal Affairs 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 177 


Committee of Grand Rapids Board of Trade, is a 
suggestive appeal: 

Plenty of room for dives and dens (glitter and glare 
of sin) ; 

Plenty of room for prison pens (gather the crim¬ 
inals in), 

Plenty of room for jails and courts (willing enough 
to pay), 

But never a place for the lads to race—no, never a 
place to play! 

Plenty of room for shops and stores (Mammon must 
have the best); 

Plenty of room for running sores that rot in the 
city’s breast! 

Plenty of room for the lures that lead the hearts of 
our youth astray ; 

But never a cent on a playground spent,—no never 
a place to play! 

Plenty of room for schools and halls, plenty of room 
for art, 

Plenty of room for teas and balls, platform, stage and 
mart, 

Proud is the city, she finds a place for many a fad 
to-day; 

But she’s more than blind if she fails to find a place 
for the boys to play! 

Give them a chance for innocent sport, give them a 
chance for fun, 

Better a playground plot than a court and a jail when 
the harm is done! 

Give them a chance,—if you stint them now, to-mor¬ 
row you’ll have to pay 

A larger bill for a darker ill; so give them a place to 
play. 


XII 


YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE WORKING 

WORLD 


T HE intimate relation between work and 
play is one of the most recent discoveries 
concerning the common activities of life. 
Much of the play of the child is a miniature repre¬ 
sentation of the manhood life of labour. Such 
play has an educational advantage as a preparation 
for the responsibilities of adult life. The wise 
parent will cherish these values, though at times he 
may be in perplexity concerning the relative impor¬ 
tance of play and labour in the character develop¬ 
ment of his child. Many a father has wondered 
why his boy is so much more ready to play than 
to work. 

The element of exhilaration which enters into the 
play life doubtless accounts in some degree for the 
greater ease with which even the most strenuous 
tasks are performed in the athletic games of the 
average youth. The biologist has a theory that 
play was an earlier art than labour, and that in play 
we follow with greater ease the long-used brain 
tracks of an early ancestry who were less accus¬ 
tomed to labour. Whether or not this sufficiently 
accounts for the indisposition to work which so 

178 


THE LIFE OF TOMORROW 


179 


often seizes upon the adolescent youth, we cannot 
say; but this writer is convinced that the ecstasy 
of the play life may in large degree be associated 
with the life of labour if the individual finds his 
true place in the working world. 

The problem of the unemployed is scarcely less 
pathetic than the problem of the mis-employed. 
The mistakes which many have made in the selec¬ 
tion of a life-work have not only hindered their 
temporal prosperity, but in large degree have ac¬ 
complished also their moral and spiritual injury. 
Evidences are abundant that these wrong choices in 
business and professional life are very frequent. 
An examination of the former occupations of 
twelve hundred clerks in the United States pension 
office some years ago showed that nearly four hun¬ 
dred had prepared themselves for the professions 
of law, medicine, and theology. The law graduates 
numbered two hundred and sixty-seven, the medical 
men one hundred, and the preachers twenty. Of 
teachers there were four hundred and fifty-seven, 
while over three hundred had formerly been as¬ 
sociated with the printing and publishing business, 
either as writers, editors, or employees. Probably 
this array of misguided talent is not so sorrowful a 
testimony to the folly of laying sky-scraper founda¬ 
tions for bungalow lives as an instance of which 
Dr. Marden tells, of three university men who were 
found working on a sheep farm in Australia. One 
was from Oxford, one from Cambridge, and an¬ 
other from a German university; all prepared to be 
leaders of men, but now are herders of sheep. 


180 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


A further striking proof of the presence of the 
misfit in life’s activities is given by Mrs. Blackford 
and Arthur Newcomb, joint authors of a compre¬ 
hensive volume on character analysis. They state: 

“ In our experience, covering years of careful in¬ 
vestigation and the examination of many thousands 
of individuals, we have seen so much of the tragedy 
of the misfit that it seems at times almost universal. 
Records of one thousand persons, taken at random 
from our files, show that seven hundred and sixty- 
three or seventy-six and three-tenths per cent felt that 
they were in the wrong vocations. Of these four 
hundred and fourteen were thirty-five years old or 
older.” 

The realization that so large a proportion of the 
race are labouring under a handicap which cannot 
but affect their individual happiness and the quality 
of their service to humanity, would seem to call for 
decided action on the part of all the agencies that 
have to do with a young person’s start in life. 
The home should especially be interested in secur¬ 
ing a favourable vocation for the child. Yet, how 
often is it the case that a parent has assumed to 
predetermine a vocation for his child, no matter 
what his natural gifts may be. Blackford and 
Newcomb give an instance of a wealthy farmer 
who made this mistake. He was determined that 
his daughter should become a musician, while his 
son must be prepared for business. He was deaf 
to the pleas of his children, whose tastes were 
exactly opposite. The daughter had business 
ability and no natural musical talent,—the son had 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOBROW 


181 


musical tastes but no business skill. The daughter 
made a failure of her musical career, though her 
father spent thousands of dollars upon her train¬ 
ing,—giving her the best advantages both at home 
and abroad. The son was a failure in business, 
and embezzled several thousand dollars from his 
employer that he might go to Europe to study 
music. Thus two lives were ruined by an obdurate 
parent who failed to respect the individuality of his 
children or regard the insistent urge of natural 
talent. 

It will not be supposed that a sudden fancy—a 
mere whim—on the part of youth shall be the 
determining factor in the choice of an occupation. 
Benjamin Franklin’s early desire was to gO' to sea, 
but his father seems to have been wise enough to 
turn his thought toward other occupations that he 
might find his natural place in the world of labour. 
Franklin says of his father: “ He sometimes took 
me to walk with him that I might see joiners, 
turners, bricklayers, braziers, etc., at their work, 
that he might observe my inclination, and endeav¬ 
our to fix it on some trade or other on land.” The 
father, after a trial of his son “ at the cutler’s 
trade ” determined to make the boy a printer, 
“ for,” says Franklin, “ from a child I was fond of 
reading, and all the little money that came into my 
hands was ever laid out in books.” 

If the elder Franklin had some difficulty in find¬ 
ing the trade which was adapted to his son in those 
earlier days of simplicity, what must be the per¬ 
plexity of both parent and child to-day when trades 


182 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 

and professions are so much more complex and 
exacting. In manual industry men do not do a 
whole job to-day, but simply handle part of the 
completed product. In the professions there is 
such a tendency to specialize that the field of labour 
and study has become intensive rather than exten¬ 
sive. The smaller ideals of convenience and 
economic gain must give way to the higher laws of 
adaptation and service. Youth in his search for a 
fitting occupation must have the assistance of those 
with a more expert knowledge of the wider fields 
of service. 

Following the natural desire of youth for a per¬ 
sonal income, the average boy will try his hand at 
various occupations, probably only as temporary 
expedients. Some of these are really helpful in 
giving the lad business experience and training him 
in thrift and dependability. The wise parent will 
however consider moral values first, and if these 
promising jobs are associated with questionable 
environment it were better that the boy should earn 
less than squander character-wealth for temporary 
gain. Many young people, pushed by family 
poverty, or personal aspiration, are assisting in 
commercial pursuits or apprenticed to manual 
labour before the days of childhood are fairly over. 
Large numbers of these will be robbed of the 
natural rights of youth, and not a few will be for¬ 
ever doomed to spiritual poverty. 

Educational leaders encourage the youth to stay 
in school, and thus fit themselves for the larger 
places in life with greater earning capacity. In 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


183 


recent years our public schools and colleges have 
been giving considerable attention to the matter of 
vocational training. The assistance thus given, 
supplemented by the intelligent cooperation of the 
home, affords the youth of the present day a more 
certain method of finding his life-work than former 
years could furnish. A number of the large cities 
of the United States maintain high schools for the 
teaching of the trades and professions. Massa¬ 
chusetts seems to have been a pioneer in this kind 
of educational work, and for more than ten years 
has been carrying on trade schools at state expense. 
Even the art of home keeping will evidently soon be 
generally taught that high school girls may be fitted 
for the womanly duties of the home circle. A 
notable example of a high school which claims to be 
a pioneer in this regard is at University Place, 
Nebraska, where the girls of the high school have 
charge of a model home which is owned and oper¬ 
ated under the direction of the board of education. 

It is evident that even in the public schools of 
the smaller localities the pupils are beginning to 
think of their future places of service in the world. 
This author has submitted a number of question¬ 
naires to school students in various towns. The re¬ 
sults of one of these lists taken in a consolidated 
school in a small town in Iowa is perhaps a typical 
presentation of the occupational preferences of the 
pupils down to the sixth grade: Of the one hundred 
and thirty-two pupils questioned thirty-four did not 
answer the question, twenty others were not de¬ 
cided, and the majority—seventy-eight—were di- 


184 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


vided as follows: Teacher, twenty; music teacher, 
three; farmer, nineteen; stenographer, seven; engi¬ 
neering, seven; bookkeeper, six; clerk, three; 
mechanic, two; doctor, two; nurse, two; oratory 
and expression, lawyer, banker, preacher, sailor, 
athletic coach, author, each one. 

Prof. Jesse B. Davis presents a very interesting 
summary of a vocational census of a certain high 
school, where he made a study of five hundred and 
thirty-one boys. Of the total number, two hundred 
and forty had decided on some vocation. There 
were two hundred and ninety-one who had not ar¬ 
rived at any decision; though one hundred and 
ninety-four had tried to do so; but ninety-seven 
boys had made no effort at all. Of the two hun¬ 
dred and ninety-one, two hundred and thirty-five 
said they would like to have advice upon the sub¬ 
ject; leaving fifty-six who were apparently indif¬ 
ferent to the question. 

An investigation of the influences which had 
assisted in the decision of the two hundred and 
forty showed the following results: Parents had 
practically decided in one hundred and five in¬ 
stances; teachers had influenced twenty-six; com¬ 
panions were the deciding factor with thirty-three; 
fifty-nine had chosen because some relative or 
friend had made the occupation attractive to them; 
leaving only twenty-three who had arrived at their 
own conclusions. As to the pupils’ knowledge of 
the chosen vocations, it was found that forty-nine 
had worked during vacations or at other times at 
the selected occupations, thirty-four knew of the 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MORROW 


185 


work through the connection of relatives with it, 
thirty-six had made some study of the vocation, 
while one hundred and twenty-three had no real 
knowledge of their chosen work. The reasons for 
the expressed choices were as follows: One, “ for 
service;” nineteen, “for money;” eighty-five, 
“ preferred ” or “ liked ” the work; thirty-nine felt 
themselves “better fitted for it;” nineteen wished 
to do the same work as their parents; seventy-seven 
had no other purpose than to make a living. 

These figures indicate home influence as the 
largest factor in the decision of a vocation, the next 
largest the influence of associates, while direct 
school influence affected a much smaller number. 
No doubt there are many who go through our 
public schools and even into a college course with 
no well grounded idea concerning their life-work. 
A president of one of the smaller colleges tells of 
a conference with some students several years ago: 
“ I went to Iowa to speak at an excellent old 
college about trade schools in Germany. At the 
close of the address a half dozen young men— 
seniors—asked to have interviews. We talked 
until after 2 a. m. about their life problems. These 
young men had spent sixteen years in school with 
no more idea what service they were to render to 
society than the day they entered school.” 

It should not be a cause for wonder that our 
schools have had so little effect upon the choice of 
a vocation, or that the individual has been allowed 
to drift into any career that suited his conveni¬ 
ence,—for the first beginnings of the organized 


186 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


efforts for vocational guidance in this country only 
date back about a dozen years. It was at first a 
business proposition and not connected with the 
schools. The first national conference on voca¬ 
tional guidance was held in Boston in 1910. Other 
national gatherings followed; and the subject was 
later taken up by the schools. Municipalities have 
also taken action, and several cities now have voca¬ 
tional directors whose expert advice is at the dis¬ 
posal of their citizens. Where the vocational di¬ 
rector has had the full personal cooperation of the 
individual good results have followed in the plac¬ 
ing of young people in situations appropriate to the 
need of the applicant. In compliance with the 
child labour regulations of the city and state the 
vocational expert has been able to correct some 
abuses which might otherwise have gone undis¬ 
covered. 

The vocational counselor in Boston investigated 
the case of a fourteen-year-old boy who applied for 
a city hall license. It was found that he got up at 
3: 30 every morning and going to the newspaper 
office got heavy bundles of papers to deliver to 
news-stands to older boys, and after five hours of 
this work, went to school,—often without break¬ 
fast. The boy was puny and undersized and had 
twice been in the hospital. He lived in a crowded 
tenement district. The father, a man forty-two 
years of age, and able to work,—but who said he 
was “ weak ”—was called before the authorities 
and instructed to give the boy better treatment and 
limit his working hours. With the increased hours 


IN TIIE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


187 


of sleep the boy’s health and school work were both 
much improved. 

If there were no other reasons than merely hu¬ 
manitarian ones why Christian workers who deal 
with the young should be interested in the labour 
conditions of youth, these would be sufficient to 
arouse our deepest sympathy. Many of the dis¬ 
heartening conditions which labour investigations 
have revealed concerning the toil of women and 
children have been corrected by aroused public 
sentiment and restrictive laws, but there is still 
enough in the wrongs inflicted upon the weaker 
ones in the working world to stir the heart of the 
compassionate and engage the serious attention of 
the reformer. 

The relation of an occupation to moral and re¬ 
ligious life should command the attention of those 
interested in youth’s spiritual welfare. This was 
especially brought to my thought by a personal 
conversation with a business man a few years ago. 
He was a pleasant gentleman, whose wife was a 
lovely character, and they had one child—a bright 
little Buster-Brown boy of four years. I urged 
him to consecrate his life to Christ, speaking espe¬ 
cially of his duty to his wife and child. He said 
that his business was such that he could not be a 
Christian. He was a cigarmaker, and while on 
the road taking orders for his house, he found that 
his best buyers in many cities were the saloon¬ 
keepers. The places where he was forced to go 
were a constant menace to morals and the associa¬ 
tions of his trade were such that even unwillingly 


188 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


he was often forced to mingle with an underworld 
which was disagreeable to his better nature. He 
confessed that his early home training was far 
different from his present life. This brief glimpse 
of a man’s life story indicates at least that if some 
one in the earlier years could have turned a certain 
boy’s feet toward a different vocational path there 
might have been a changed trend to the whole life. 

It has, however, been too largely assumed that 
there are only certain vocations in which moral 
integrity is absolutely required. Some years ago 
a prominent man in American public life, in writ¬ 
ing of the superior qualifications necessary for the 
minister to possess, said: 

“ You do not have to be anything in particular to 
be a lawyer. I have been a lawyer, and I know. 
You do not have to be anything in particular, except a 
kind-hearted man, perhaps, to be a physician; you do 
not have to be anything or undergo any strong spiri¬ 
tual change, in order to be a merchant. The only 
profession which consists in being something is the 
ministry of our Lord and Saviour—and it does not 
consist of anything else.” 

There is of course truth in such a statement, but 
there has probably never been a time when the 
standards of moral living as a requisite for success 
in every walk in life were higher than now. I 
frequently receive letters from employment 
agencies and business firms who have some one in 
view for a position, concerning whom they ask a 
detailed statement. Such questionnaires, along with 
questions concerning training and ability, invari- 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


189 


ably ask concerning the moral life of the appli¬ 
cant: “Are his habits sober and temperate?” 
“Does he use tobacco,—smoke cigarettes?” 
“ Does he play cards for money, or engage in 
other forms of gambling?” The personal ques¬ 
tion blanks furnished to the applicant for positions 
are provided with some similar inquiries. 

Young women as well as young men are subject 
to these character tests; indeed there are some 
places in life where their character seems to be an 
especially important asset. Certain nurse training 
schools require of their students the acceptance of 
the Florence Nightingale pledge, which reads as 
follows: 

“ I solemnly pledge myself before God, and in the 
presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity 
and to practice my profession faithfully. I will ab¬ 
stain from whatever is mischievous, and I will not 
take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I 
will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the 
standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence 
any personal matters coming to my knowledge in 
the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I en¬ 
deavour to aid the physician in his work and devote 
myself to the welfare of those committed to my 
care.” 

The integrity of faithful employees has often 
proved the safeguard of business success. A 
number of years ago a young lady stenographer in 
the general office of a great railroad system was 
offered $5,000 by business rivals to betray the 
contents of correspondence which had passed 


190 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


through her hands. She refused to take the bribe 
and gave evidence which brought the conspirators 
into court to answer for their misdeeds. 

The day has passed when the Church can think 
of the common occupations of life as wholly di¬ 
vorced from the religious ideal. In all walks of 
the commercial world are to be found those who 
have for years administered their business in ac¬ 
cordance with high Christian principles, and who 
conscientiously devote some definite part of their 
financial proceeds to the carrying on of philan¬ 
thropic and Christian work. Present day youth 
must be inspired with the thought that the select¬ 
ing of an occupation and the filling of even a 
humble place in the busy life of labour is a religious 
task of no small importance. If the Church is to 
have the necessary means for the carrying out of a 
social and religious program which is constantly 
increasing in magnitude, its future members must 
be taught that there is a vital relation between a 
Christian’s use of the material things of life and 
his interest in the enlarging Kingdom of Christ. 

The recent awakening of the Church to the 
possibility of directing the life occupations of the 
young has resulted in the organization of “ life 
service ” departments by our general church boards 
of Sunday schools and young people’s societies. 
The enrollment of young people for ministerial, 
missionary, and miscellaneous Christian service has 
become a feature of young people’s conventions 
and institutes through the country, and these 
names are filed at the central offices of these so- 


m THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


191 


cieties. By correspondence and personal contact 
the young people are kept in mind, so that educa¬ 
tional preparation may be made, and the young 
Christian furnished every opportunity for the 
carrying out of his life decision. 

In some degree this plan for the enlistment of 
young life in the service of the Church was prob¬ 
ably due to the concern of church authorities over 
the alarming decline in the number of candidates 
for the ministry and the increasing need of mis¬ 
sionary fields. One great denomination reports 
that it has 30,000 churches with only 17,000 min¬ 
isters. Every year five per cent of the ministers 
are lost out by death or retirement; and 1,700 new 
recruits are needed to fill up the ranks and provide 
for the expansion of the work. The present rate 
of supply for this work is only three and one-half 
per cent, or five hundred and sixty-five. The out¬ 
put of the theological schools, as reported by sev¬ 
eral denominations, has for the past few years 
been discouragingly small. Most recent advices, 
however, indicate that there is an increased number 
of ministerial students, and the returns from the 
newly organized life service endeavours seem to 
point to a much better condition regarding min¬ 
isterial help. 

It is interesting to note that the larger con¬ 
tributions to the ministerial force of the Church 
come from the country districts, while the city 
churches have done little to furnish these heralds 
of the cross. At a great Methodist convention 
held at Harrisburg, Pa., it was discovered by a 


192 


THE YOUTH OP TO-DAY 


census of those present that nine-tenths of the 
leaders of the Church in Pennsylvania were born 
and raised in the rural sections. One small church 
in Rockland Township, Venango County, twelve 
miles from any worth-while town, has given 
twenty-three men to the ministry. The rural 
neighbourhood where the church is located includes 
several other small churches, and from the group 
there has come one minister a year on an average 
for sixty-five years. 

There is little doubt that the spirit of the homes 
which have hitherto made up the constituency of 
the churches in these country districts has had 
much to do with this fine result. Childhood im¬ 
pressions concerning the ministry as a life-work 
have greatly influenced youth’s after decision. 
The early age at which the first movings toward 
the ministry have come to those who afterward 
entered the calling are indicated by the returns from 
a questionnaire—already mentioned in these pages, 
—from which I secured data from one hundred 

and seventv-five Methodist ministers in a western 
•/ 

conference. So far as the figures are exactly given 
the lists show that one hundred and forty-two of 
these date their first leadings toward the ministry 
at a period below the age of twenty; only twenty- 
two placing these impressions above that age; and 
the average time of all being fifteen and six-tenths 
years. Quite a number of them say that these 
first impressions came with the earliest childhood, 
the ages of five, six, and seven years being several 
times mentioned. One says, “ I never had any- 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


193 


thing else seriously in mind. I always felt that I 
must preach the Gospel.” The tabulation of 
these life experiences as well as the vivid personal 
experience of the writer is confirmatory of the 
belief that many a lad has grown up with the 
ministry as a life-work in the background of his 
thought in a similar way to the experience of Ray¬ 
mond IT. Huse, in his little book, “ The Soul of 
a Child ” : 

“ We know a lad who, from the first time he at¬ 
tended church, when he was four years old, never 
thought of himself in the glorious days of manhood 
yet to be as anything but a Christian minister. It 
was not the whim of the child who wants to be a 
soldier one day and a storekeeper the next. It was 
a deep feeling, a settled certainty that never left him. 
When he played with other children and—after the 
manner of children—posed as ‘ butcher, baker, and 
Indian chief,’ underneath it all was the feeling, ‘ I am 
just playing this; I am really to be a minister.’ ” 

The Christian home as well as the agencies of 
the organized Church should supplement the mov- 
ings of the Divine Spirit in the life of the young 
in the effort to impress upon them the desirability 
of finding a place in life where Christian service 
can be rendered in a perfectly natural way. Not 
only are the fields of ministerial and missionary 
service open before the youth to-day, but the wider 
activities of the Church are demanding and will 
soon require in increasing numbers pastors’ assist¬ 
ants, directors of religious education and recrea¬ 
tional life, and other forms of service for which 


194 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


both young men and women are now preparing in 
our Christian schools. 

It is not our purpose to indicate that every 
Christian young person should find his field of 
labour within the Church. Every occupation will 
afford an opportunity for service to God and man 
if the consecration of life to the Divine plan is 
recognized as the basis of our labour. And the 
joy of labour will return when in every task we 
have the fellowship of the Carpenter of Galilee sug¬ 
gested in Charles M. Sheldon’s poem: 

“ If I could hold within my hand 
The hammer Jesus swung, 

Not all the gold in all the land, 

Nor jewels countless as the sand 
All in the balance hung, 

Could weigh against the precious thing 
Round which His fingers once did cling. 

“ If I could have the table He 
Once made in Nazareth, 

Not all the pearls in all the sea 
For crowns of kings and kings to be 
So long as men have breath, 

Could buy that thing of wood He made, 

The Lord of Lords who learned a trade. 

“ But still that hammer yet is shown 
By honest hands that toil; 

And at that table men sat down 
And all made equal by a crown 
No gold or pearls can soil; 

The shop of Nazareth was bare 
But brotherhood was budded there.” 


XIII 


THE HEROES OF YOUTH 


T HE spirit of hero-worship is found both in 
patriotism and Christianity. The power 
of a great ideal, illustrated in the life of a 
national leader, has made possible the most daring 
revolutions and the severest struggles for liberty. 
The necessity of a national hero as an inspiration 
for a downtrodden people was brought forcibly to 
my thought by a teacher from one of our govern¬ 
ment schools in the Philippines who was on a 
furlough in this country a few years ago. She 
related how the life and sacrifices of Jose Rizal, an 
educated and patriotic leader of the Filipinos, was 
being used by the teachers as the ideal champion of 
liberty, to inspire them with a love for their native 
land. The need of the people—so long oppressed 
—was felt to be a national hero whose self-sacri¬ 
ficing spirit might inspire them to high ideals of 
citizenship. Concerning the influence of this devo¬ 
tion to their national hero, Bishop Stuntz, of the 
Methodist Church, writes from his long experience 
in the Philippines: “ No name is so popular in the 
Philippines to-day as that of Jose Rizal. His pic¬ 
ture is on the walls of tens of thousands of homes, 
from the best houses of Filipinos in Manila and the 

i95 


196 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


large provincial cities, to the humblest house of the 
labourer in remote villages.” 

The recognition of the value of the hero’s ex¬ 
ample and the acceptance of this material by these 
educators as a basis on which to build an ideal 
citizenship, is a method worthy of imitation by 
those who seek to lead our youth into the paths 
of correct moral living. Not only the patriotic 
ideals of youth but their ethical standards as well 
are shaped by their life heroes. 

The value of hero worship to youth has more 
frequently been appreciated by the world than by 
the Church. Boys and girls’ books are enhanced 
considerably in value by being published in series 
with the same central characters,—thus giving 
youth the opportunity to follow through their va¬ 
rious experiences these fictitious characters who 
become real heroes to their ardent admirers. The 
popularity of the motion picture is due in some de¬ 
gree to the prominence given to certain “ stars ” 
whose names and pictures become familiar to youth, 
and whose clothes and mannerisms are copied by 
the young people who witness the plays. The 
melancholy moral downfall of some of these screen 
idols brings a sense of grief to those who have been 
their devotees. The same spirit of hero worship 
is manifest in the devotion of the youth to a much 
admired athletic champion. The influence of such 
a hero is indicated in the appeal of Mike Murphy, 
once coach of the University of Pennsylvania, to 
his football team when it seemed as though they 
would lose the game. In the interim between 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 197 


halves he said, “ If you can’t win for the sake of 
Pennsylvania, if you can’t win for the sake of your 
mothers and sweethearts, go into the game and 
win for me! ” In response to this challenge they 
won the game. 

It is sometimes the case that in this hero-wor¬ 
shipping era of life the parent loses patience with 
his child’s fancy for these strange lovers. A sort 
of unwitting jealousy concerning the child’s out¬ 
side friends manifests itself, and impatient remarks 
about the youth’s admiration for screen and story 
heroes are frequently made. In many localities 
which are bereft of great characters as life patterns 
it is possible that the hero of the story or the 
picture—especially if these may be of the better 
class—afford more excellent life examples to the 
youth than the flesh-and-blood folk among whom 
he lives. 

The followers of Jehovah in past ages recognized 
the value of the religious hero more keenly than has 
the Church of the Christian era. The reverence of 
the ancient Jew for Moses and the line of patriotic 
leaders who followed him, gave to their descend¬ 
ants—and indeed to the whole Christian world as 
well—a picture gallery of heroes whose character 
and doings are an unfailing stimulus to the relig¬ 
ious life. Modern theologians have been inclined 
to remove the personal element from religious 
ideals and substitute formulas and written creeds 
instead. 

The value of the study of the important char¬ 
acters of history from the standpoint of the heroic 


198 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


is a recent discovery of the Church. For many 
years the Church’s teaching of youth, so far as 
character study was concerned, was along the line 
of saintliness, rather than heroism. Ask any vig¬ 
orous and alert young American what a saint is and 
he will tell you that it is some one especially dis¬ 
tinguished for goodness. A picture of a pale, fair 
countenanced man, with a most gentle expression 
of face, and possibly with a halo around his head, 
will immediately appear to his imagination. Ask 
him what a hero is, and he will tell you that it is 
one who has done valiant deeds. The mental pic¬ 
ture before him will be a knight in armour or a 
soldier in the modern equipment of warfare. There 
you have it—the saint as a synonym for goodness 
(of the negative sort), the hero as a representative 
of action. Too long we have distinguished be¬ 
tween being and doing. The young person has 
sought out his heroes among the folks of action, 
rather than accept as his ideal the character that is 
merely supinely good. Happily for the youth of 
the present day, the Biblical material of our teach¬ 
ing is now presented from the standpoint of the 
heroic. We teach the junior child stories of the 
heroes of the Old and New Testaments, and in all 
the graded lessons emphasize the fearlessness of the 
prophets, the courage of the disciples, the unafraid 
character of Paul, and the stalwart manliness of the 
Master of men. 

Wherever manliness and heroism are found 
exemplified in human lives these lives are especially 
potent as a force in drawing youth toward their 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOKKOW 199 


ideals. For the sake of the salvation of youth, if 
nothing else, the Church of the present day must 
get back to such Christian ideals as can be con¬ 
creted in personal life. John Wanamaker, known 
as a great business man and a great Christian, tells 
how the words of a certain young business man, 
when he was a “ big, inexperienced, and irreligious 
country boy,” led him to become a Christian. He 
had gone to church on the invitation of a certain 
salesman, and the minister who conducted the meet¬ 
ing asked the laymen present to testify concerning 
their Christian faith. One testimony given that 
night impressed young Wanamaker greatly; it was 
that of a young business man who said that he had 
been a Christian for only two years, but in that 
time he had discovered that religion had made him 
a better business man; that he had met with greater 
financial success, had made more money and made 
it easier by operating his business according to 
Christian principles than in the other days when he 
did not follow Christ. After the meeting was dis¬ 
missed the boy remained behind, and though no 
one was left but the minister and the janitor, he 
went up to the old minister and gave him his hand 
and told him that he had given his heart to Christ 
and had decided to begin the Christian life. The 
minister spoke kindly to the country boy, saying, 
“ God bless you, my boy.” “And,” says Mr. 
Wanamaker, “ that was all there was of it, and I 
have been a Christian ever since.” The conver¬ 
sion of the merchant prince of Philadelphia, whose 
character is known as widely as his business sue- 


200 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


cess, was really the fruitage of a sudden response to 
an ideal which he had found incarnated in the 
business man who gave a faithful testimony for 
Christ. 

The opportunity to be a hero to youth is a 
privilege which should be coveted by every follower 
of the Master. Is it too much to say with Dr. 
Slaughter that “ the chief value of great men is to 
fertilize the imagination of adolescents ” ? Cer¬ 
tainly we may believe that, as another has said, 
“ Every man is some boy’s hero.” Whatever of 
hero worship there is in the days of childhood is 
usually wrapped up in the child’s implicit confi¬ 
dence in the parent. Some fathers very happily 
sustain this relation to their sons up to their older 
years. Many men who seek to retain the devotion 
of their own sons will the better order their lives 
in response to-such a demand than in obedience to 
any other law, either human or Divine. It is quite 
possible that the parent learns more from the child 
concerning the ethical standards of life than does 
the child from the parent. A father who wrote a 
letter to his eighteen-year-old son shortly after his 
enlistment in the World War uttered some well 
chosen sentiments concerning the relation between 
parent and child: 

“ Some day, I hope, you will have a son of your 
own. As you watch him on the day of his birth, as 
his tiny form lies by his mother’s side, a gust of 
tenderness will come to your aching heart and fill 
you with a sense of sobering responsibility and obliga¬ 
tion. There will come with this a wave of parental 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


201 


love that will expand your soul and reveal wells of 
unsuspected emotional depth. Coincident with this 
will come a great surging ambition. What sacrifices 
will you not be willing to make, provided only your 
vicarious hardships ease the path for your offspring 
and lead him to places of distinction and honour.” 

A lack of appreciation of the youth may break 
the closeness of association between parent and 
child, and the youth be forced to turn to strangers 
for inspiration and help. The father of James 
Whitcomb Riley, so the IToosier poet says, had no 
appreciation of his son’s literary talent. He was a 
lawyer. The poet says, “ Being a lawyer, my 
father believed in facts. He had little use for a 
boy who could not learn arithmetic. There were 
others of the same opinion. My schoolmates had 
an aptitude for figures and stood well in their 
classes. The result was, half the town pitied me. 
Again and again I was told I would have to be 
supported by the family.” A neighbour woman 
who assisted her own boy and young Riley to good 
books was the first to see in “ the strange young 
man ” the germ of literary ability. The relations 
of the young fellow with his father were somewhat 
strained for a number of years; but later in life 
they came into a close fellowship again. After the 
poet had attained some eminence and also some 
wealth, the old man came to see him. The son 
took him to the clothing store and furnished him 
with a new outfit and entertained him at the best 
hotel. After dinner they walked about the city 
together and the father was proudly introduced by 


202 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Riley to his friends. The son said, “ I tell you that 
did me good. It was a proud day in my life. 
Neither of us recalled the misunderstandings of 
long ago.” 

Among the most potent influences for good in 
the life of the youth outside the family circle, the 
teacher easily holds an outstanding place. The 
character of the teacher is well presented by Dr. 
George H. Betts in one of his recent books, in 
which he recognizes three kinds of teachers; the 
first, a long remembered class, not because of af¬ 
fection, but because of certain antagonisms and re¬ 
sentments for their unjust onslaughts that can only 
be forgiven after many years have passed by; an¬ 
other class who are remembered because of real 
affection and gratitude as long as memory lasts. 
“ Between these two,” he says, “ is a third and 
larger group; those who are forgotten, because they 
failed to stamp a lasting impression on their 
pupils.” In connection with the memory of the 
pleasant relation between pupil and teacher, he tells 
of a venerable old man who approached his desk 
with an ancient text-book in grammar across whose 
fly leaf was written the familiar signature of 
Grover Cleveland. The old man said, “ I have 
been a teacher. In one of my first schools I had 
Grover Cleveland as a pupil, to whom I loaned my 
text-book in grammar, as he had come without one. 
Years passed, and one day I was among the many 
hundreds passing in line to grasp the President’s 
hand at a public reception. I carried this book 
with me, and when it came my turn to meet the 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


203 


President, I presented this volume and said, 4 Mr. 
President, do you recognize this book, and do you 
remember me? ’ In an instant the light of recog¬ 
nition flashed in his eyes. Calling me by name, he 
grasped my hand and held it while the crowd 
waited and while he recalled the old times and 
thanked me for what I had meant to him when I 
was his teacher. Then he took the old book and 
autographed it for me.” 

The personality of the teacher, whether in the 
day school or in the religious assembly, is a vital 
asset in his resources. Multitudes of young people 
who have grown up in our Sunday schools have not 
as clear an idea of the Bible or theological formulas 
as they have of the character of the teachers who 
taught the lessons. The deepest impressions for 
good have been made upon human lives by many 
teachers who had poor equipment for studying or 
imparting their lessons, and whose knowledge of 
pedagogical laws was quite negligible. But by 
their devotion and earnest efforts they succeeded in 
moulding some human lives into a resemblance to 
the Divine. It is no argument against our im¬ 
proved methods of religious training that this is so, 
but it is a testimony to the power of the Eternal 
Spirit which worketh wheresoever hearts are open 
to His power. 

A newspaper clipping which lies before me as I 
write records the death of an octogenarian at the 
home of her daughter in San Jose, California. 
Mrs. M. E. Roberts, the subject of the sketch, was 
the widow of a minister living at Lincoln, Ne- 


204 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


braska, who for more than a generation kept up a 
Sunday-school class of young men in the leading 
Methodist Church of her home city, many of whom 
were students of the high school or university. 
Her home was ever the center of student activities 
as well. The finest tribute in her biography is the 
line of the newspaper paragrapher which says, “ it 
is believed that she influenced the lives of more 
young men than any other woman in Lincoln.” 
Probably more widely known is the work of an¬ 
other Christian woman, Mrs. Charlotte F. Wilder, 
of Manhattan, Kansas, for over forty-five years a 
teacher of a remarkable Bible class of young men 
which has run through the years from one hun¬ 
dred to one hundred and fifty in attendance. Dur¬ 
ing the years over three thousand young men stu¬ 
dents of the State Agricultural College have had 
the benefit of her class. One hundred of these are 
in the ministry, and the former students of the 
class are found in all the continents of the eastern 
and western world. 

When such opportunities for character creation 
are within the reach of the one who will devote 
himself to the youth of his generation, it is little 
wonder that teachers in our church schools are 
taking advantage of the best equipment for their 
work which they can find. The denominational 
boards of our leading churches are furnishing very 
fitting courses in child study and practical teaching 
methods for those who are willing to be leaders in 
such inspiring work. Besides the local training 
classes which are being organized each year in 


IN THE LIFE OF TO MOEEOW 


205 


increasing numbers, and the special correspondence 
courses offered, our leading colleges and uni¬ 
versities are creating departments of religious 
education where those who seek to prepare them¬ 
selves for the work in a most thorough manner are 
given the chance for an educational equipment 
adequate to their task. 

The wisdom of preparing leaders for the future 
day is apparent from the success which has at¬ 
tended such efforts; it is also indicated by the need 
which is still manifest as we examine the present 
teaching force of our church schools. In many an 
outlying community these schools have a very 
poorly equipped leadership. In the larger centers 
of population much better conditions obtain. The 
educational training of one hundred teachers in a 
typical small city is thus tabulated by Inter-Church 
statistics: Eight had college training, while six 
were graduates; thirty-one were high school grad¬ 
uates, and sixteen had graduated from the grades, 
while eight did not finish; and the remainder were 
listed among those who had had some training in 
high school or business college. Many of these 
had evidently begun their work as Sunday-school 
teachers on small intellectual preparation, for an 
effort to tabulate the ages at which they commenced 
teaching in the church school showed the following 
results: One at the age of thirteen; twelve at the 
age of fourteen; eighteen at the age of fifteen; 
thirty-one at the age of sixteen; thirty-two at the 
age of seventeen; and the balance did not report 
on the question. 


206 


THE YOUTH OP TO-DAY 


It is not supposed, of course, that mere intel¬ 
lectual qualifications will fit one for teaching and 
youthful leadership. A heart attitude which is un¬ 
favourable will negative all mental preparation. 
G. Stanley Hall says: 

“If there is such a thing as a * call to teach/ it 
consists in loving children, and with love go insight, 
the power to serve, and the desire to help each child 
to the maximum development of body and soul of 
which he is capable. . . . Those who do not 

love children have no right to teach/’ 

The Church has reason to be grateful for the 
ministry who have realized the power of the teach¬ 
ing function. Personally it seems clear to the 
writer that what the Church needs to-day is a 
teaching ministry which shall abandon the man¬ 
nerisms of Websterian oratory and in straightfor¬ 
ward words bear the commanding message of truth 
which the Master committed to His men when His 
“ great commission ” reached their hearts in 
Galilee of old. He sent them forth with a mes¬ 
sage which was summed up in the words—“ teach¬ 
ing them to observe all things, whatsoever I have 
commanded you.” Since He Himself was known 
to His disciples as the Great Teacher, they—His 
pupils—could aspire to no higher honour than to 
be His successors in the task. 

Through the years that have intervened since 
the first disciples went forth upon their teaching 
mission those who have followed them in the way 
have brought their inspiration to the listening 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


207 


multitudes from the smallest crossroads chapel to 
the cathedral on the avenue, and in turn have in¬ 
spired others to take up the work of the evangel 
as well. Of one hundred and fifty-four ministers 
from whom I received replies to the question, 
“ What person or agency assisted you in your 
decision to devote your life to the ministry?” 
eighty-four included the pastor as a deciding 
factor. The width of the pastor’s influence in this 
particular is revealed in some measure by the an¬ 
swers of the same ministers to the question, “ How 
many can you count who through your influence 
have entered ministerial or missionary work ? ” 
The returns from one hundred of these pastors 
show a total of four hundred and thirteen cases in 
which they materially assisted young men to make 
a decision of this sort. Other indefinite answers, 
such as “ several,” “ some,” “ a number,” would 
have swelled the total result to much greater pro¬ 
portions if accurate figures had been given. 

Even in the smallest communities where but few 
come under his influence the minister is the recog¬ 
nized inspirer of the ideals of the young; while in 
the wider circles of city and college life the results 
are probably more widely felt, but less accurately 
known. No doubt many a young person who 
never by his spoken word indicated the fact,— 
desiring to make a life that should be more than 
mere existence,—has looked to the pastor for his 
character ideals and life inspiration. 

The highest service of youth’s hero will often be 
to aid him in discovering himself, that out of the 


208 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


seemingly crude material of his own life he may 
attain the destiny of which he has often dreamed. 
Such heroes and heroines are aptly described by 
Harriet Beecher Stowe: 

“ There be soul artists who go through this world, 
looking among their fellows with reverence, as one 
looks among the dust and rubbish of old shops for 
hidden works of Titian and Leonardo, and finding 
them, however cracked or torn or painted over with 
the tawdry daubs of pretenders, immediately set 
themselves to clean and restore. Such be God’s real 
priests, whose ordination and anointing are from the 
Holy Spirit; and he who hath not this enthusiasm is 
not ordained of God, though whole synods of bishops 
laid hands upon him.” 

A minister, sitting in his study in Chicago, pre¬ 
paring his sermon, looked up to greet his nephew, 
a young student, who stood by his desk. In the 
midst of the conversation which followed the boy 
said, “ Uncle, what are you going to preach on next 
Sunday?” The minister answered, “I am plan¬ 
ning to speak on the text, 4 To this end was I bom, 
and for this purpose came I into the world/ ” 
“ Well, uncle,” said the young fellow, “ I have al¬ 
ways wondered why I ever came into the world,— 
what I was ever born for.” Within a week after 
that came the great fire at the Iroquois theater, and 
this same manly young fellow was heroically 
working in the gallery carrying one after another 
to the windows and passing them to rescuers out¬ 
side, where they might be safe from the panic and 
terror which reigned within. When, exhausted 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


209 


and overcome, they rescued him from the "burning 
building, they took him to his uncle’s home. The 
physicians said he had breathed flame and smoke 
until there was no hope for him. His minister- 
uncle, none other than the late Dr. Gunsaulus, came 
to bring him comfort, though his heart was full of 
sorrow at his nephew’s condition. The sufferer 
opened his eyes in a moment of passing conscious¬ 
ness and seeing his uncle by his side, said with 
exultant voice, “O uncle, now I know! Now I 
know! ” 


XIV 


REACHING THE GOAL 

E VERY generation lives for its successors. 
From the very beginning of time it has 
been true that life can only be lived by the 
bounteous legacies which have come from the ac¬ 
cumulated resources of one’s ancestors. Among 
civilized men this truth finds its constant illustra¬ 
tion in the care of the parent for the child. It is 
doubtful if the childless individual, bereft of this 
inspiration, can ever follow as completely the self- 
sacrificing ideal of the One who “ freely gave 
Himself up for us all,” as can the toiling parent 
who seeks to smooth the rugged way of life for the 
little feet that trudge behind. 

This principle is well recognized in family life; 
but men have been slow to apply it to other institu¬ 
tions. It is only in the most recent times that the 
school has recognized that the pupil is the prime 
factor in education. For many years the process 
of education was a thing similar to a ready-made 
suit; it fitted the individual of regulation size, but 
those who were too broad or too long, or too fat, or 
too lean, were condemned to wear sackcloth all 
their lives because our intellectual tailors could only 
cut according to a regulation pattern. The adapta- 


THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


211 


tion of the course of instruction to the pupil’s need 
is a modern discovery in the held of learning which 
will enable the coming generation to be clothed in a 
mental equipment of genius and power. It enables 
the school to exist for its learners rather than for 
its learning. 

In a large sense the Church of Christ needs to 
grasp this same truth. The Church of to-day must 
live for the Church of to-morrow. The family,— 
an ideal organization from which other human in¬ 
stitutions can well be patterned,—has learned this. 
The nation,—especially where the democratic spirit 
of the common people has prevailed,—has also 
learned it. The school,—the nearest to the Church 
in calling and purpose—has come to this knowl¬ 
edge. The Church,—with its earnest consecration 
to lofty ideals,—is but beginning to learn that the 
very preservation of its own life depends upon its 
living for the Church that is to be. 

If the application of this truth to religious en¬ 
deavour seems to be at all strange or unusual it is 
only necessary that we should remind ourselves that 
all human experience is vocal with the testimony 
that both nations and individuals which hold the 
places of greatest responsibility—while regarding 
with due care the past and its lessons—cannot but 
give keen and careful attention to the path which 
future generations are to travel. Some poet has 
given us a significant illustration of this truth: 

“ An old man going a lone highway, 

Came at the evening, cold and gray, 

To a chasm vast and deep and wide, 


212 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


The old man crossed in the twilight dim, 

The sullen stream had no fear for him; 

And he turned when safe on the other side, 

And built a bridge to span the tide. 

“ ‘ Old man/ said a fellow pilgrim near, 

4 You’re wasting your strength with building here, 
Your journey will end with the ending day, 

You never again will pass this way, 

You’ve crossed the chasm deep and wide, 

Why build you this bridge at eventide ? ’ 

“ The builder lifted his old gray head— 

4 Good friend, in the path I have come,’ he said, 

* There followeth after me to-day 
A youth whose feet must pass this way. 

The chasm that has been as naught to me, 

To the fair-haired youth may a pitfall be, 

He too must cross in the twilight dim; 

Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.’ ” 

For the accomplishment of the good purposes 
which the Church desires to carry out for its chil¬ 
dren, some readjustment of manners and methods 
will doubtless be necessary. These changes in the 
Church’s program are gradually taking place. 
Among the aged some regrets are heard that these 
newer times are vibrant with the voices of strange 
prophets, and often a desire is expressed that “ the 
good old times” might come back again. The 
Church will have to struggle with this spirit of 
retrogression in the guise of piety. But if it keeps 
pace with youth it must ever face forward. 

One of the striking changes which has come to 
the modern Church is its changing vocabulary. 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 


213 


Whether for good or for ill, certain set theological 
expressions seem to have nearly passed away, 
and are seldom on the lips of laymen, and 
almost eliminated from the modern sermon. New 
phrases and new plans have taken the place of those 
which have departed. Even in great revival cam¬ 
paigns where earnest efforts are made to be true 
to orthodox standards of teaching, the converts are 
called “ trail hitters,” and applause instead of 
“ amens ” is the accompaniment of the evangelist’s 
preaching. 

No doubt the set theological formulas of other 
days have been confusing in a great degree to the 
youth who has tried to apply them to practical 
Christianity. Dr. Borden P. Bowne, in his 
“ Studies in Christianity,” says: 

“ My professional life has largely been spent in 
contact with thoughtful young men and women; and 
I have frequently observed an uneasy feeling on 
their part that the traditional phrases of religious 
speech do not set forth with unstrained naturalness 
and transparent sincerity the facts of their religious 
life. Often they have formed a conception of what 
the religious life should be by reflection on the cus¬ 
tomary and inherited phrases and thus they have 
been led to entertain unwarranted expectations. Then 
the failure to realize them has led to an uncomfort¬ 
able sense of artificiality and unreality in all religious 
experience.” 

Guided by an intelligent and sympathetic teacher 
the thoughtful youth may be led to see that the 
familiar figures of speech used in teaching religion 


214 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


are not to be literalized to the destruction of 
practical religious experience. In the light of our 
fuller knowledge of mental states, a readjustment 
of religious phraseology will be possible on the part 
of the leader of the young which will help remove 
Christian experience from an archaic realm to the 
area of practical life. The nature of religion and 
its intimate connection with the finer side of exist¬ 
ence will, however, prevent the elimination of the 
figurative and poetic in the teaching of spiritual 
truths. The wise teacher will of course introduce 
only the simile and comparative element in accord¬ 
ance with the interest and knowledge of his pupils. 

The adaptability of the newer methods of relig¬ 
ious education to the need of youth is abundantly 
evidenced, but there are those with small experience 
and short-sighted vision who sometimes arise to 
make a protest against any deviation from long- 
used methods and interpretations. In a certain 
church during a Decision Day service a junior boy 
responded to the appeal to begin the Christian life. 
The pastor of the church immediately after re¬ 
ceived a severely-worded letter from the father of 
the boy denouncing him for causing the boy to take 
the step, saying that the child was not old enough 
to understand it, and that he wanted him to decide 
such important matters after he had reached the 
years of discretion. Then the pastor took down 
the church record and found that,—a few years 
before—the little boy had been baptized, and re¬ 
called that on that occasion certain pledges were 
made by the father that “ in every way, by precept 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 215 


and example/’ he as a parent would “ seek to lead 
him into the love of God and the service of our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” He then wrote the father a 
letter and called his attention to the promises 
made concerning the religious education of the boy, 
and urged upon him the complete fulfillment of 
these vows. 

This experience,—in which the home failed to 
cooperate with the Church in the saving of the 
young,—reminds the writer of these lines of in¬ 
stances in which he has keenly felt the lack of in¬ 
terest of the stalwart people of the Church in efforts 
made for the capture of the youth of the com¬ 
munity for service in the Kingdom of Christ. 
Either on the ground of the expense of an attrac¬ 
tive recreational program, or because the methods 
of attracting young people to the services were out 
of the ordinary, or the complaint that other forms 
of church work were neglected, the efforts of those 
who were interested in such work were frowned 
upon. After a few years of a pastorate that 
resulted in gathering large numbers of the most 
hopeful youth into the Church by these very 
methods, another pastor more conservative appears 
and with the change of leadership much of the 
work so well begun is left to perish from lack of 
further care. Such experiences reveal the necessity 
of special training on the part of the ministry for 
the task of the religious nurture of the young, as 
well as the need of an educational campaign among 
the laity concerning the conservation of youth for 
the Church of Christ. 


216 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


There is perhaps no hindrance to the Church’s 
continuous success in handling young people that is 
so patent to the onlooker as the kaleidoscopic 
changes of pastorate which so often occur, espe¬ 
cially in the middle west and beyond. In one 
western conference of the Methodist Church the 
conference statistician shows that the average pas¬ 
torate is eighteen months. In another conference 
of two hundred and fifty ministers over half the 
churches changed pastors in a recent year. It can 
doubtless be proven by statistics from other de¬ 
nominations that the short pastorate is an affliction 
from which they also suffer. No interest of the 
community’s religious life is so sensitive to these 
changes as the young people’s work. An echo of 
such a pathetic condition came to my notice a short 
time ago in a letter from an adolescent schoolgirl 
to her friend in another city. A former pastor, 
who had won the hearts of youth and drawn them 
to his church by attractive picture and story meth¬ 
ods, had been succeeded by another pastor of a 
different type, and the popular pastor’s youthful 
friend writes as follows: 

“ We sure miss the pictures and other things up 

here. That story Mr. A-was telling from week 

to week I liked awfully well,—but I didn’t get to 
hear it all. Everything is now so formal and stiff 
here. We were talking the other day,—and I said, 

I liked to hear Mr. A- preach because he told 

about his boyhood days and told stories, and—I 
don’t know, he was always smiling. This preacher 
always talks about things over in Jerusalem and 
Egypt and places I never expect to see or have any- 




IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORKOW 


217 


thing to do with, and I can’t get any more sense out 
of it than a man in the moon.” 

It is possible, especially in smaller towns and 
outlying communities, that the community spirit 
toward young life and the more progressive meth¬ 
ods of ministering to youth may be cruelly indif¬ 
ferent if not strongly antagonistic. The element 
which is in the way of all progress, whether ma¬ 
terial, intellectual or spiritual is thus characterized 
by Dr. Charles Stelzle, a well-known religious and 
social worker, who describes some things he saw 
while on a recent Chautauqua lecturing trip; 

“ The average small town is hindered by the smug, 
self-satisfied group who are quite content with things 
as they are; who are afraid of discussion of any 
sort because it may disturb their personal relation¬ 
ships and make them think more deeply about mod¬ 
ern social questions. They are afraid they may have 
to change their manner of living, and this they do 
not wish to do because they are now quite comfort¬ 
able. Meanwhile these people are influential enough 
to kill off the preacher who is objectionable to them. 
They can easily shut out a lecturer who brings what 
is to them an objectionable message. Indeed there 
is no situation in the town which they may not dom¬ 
inate. This particular group constitutes the most 
perilous element in society to-dav, so far as real prog¬ 
ress in the small towns is concerned.” 

Faith in the common people as well as our con¬ 
fidence in the powers that are eternal makes us 
believe that in spite of the influence of this par¬ 
ticular brand of social and religious reactionaries, a 
considerable portion of the Church will respond to 


218 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


a proper presentation of the claims of the newer 
and larger program of Christian endeavour. This 
author wishes to record here his appreciation of the 
many loyal souls among the maturer portion of the 
Church who have faithfully seconded his efforts 
for the saving of the youth in the local fields where 
he has laboured. Though winter be upon their 
heads the birds of springtime sing within their 
hearts and their arms are open to welcome youth 
to the Church that is yet to be. 

The rank and file of the Church however must 
be awakened to this same sympathy with youth and 
to the recognition of the value of an enlarged and 
advanced program for the Christian Church. Dr. 
Walter Athearn recently said: “There should be 
launched at once a nation-wide propaganda de¬ 
signed to give the Church a conscience on the sub¬ 
ject of religious education.” When the Church 
can be made to see that the training of the young 
in morals and religion is a vital thing, and that the 
Spirit of God rests upon and blesses the teaching of 
spiritual truths to the child before he has gone 
astray in even greater measure than upon the 
preaching of Scriptural truth to the individual after 
he has gone astray, it will then be willing to invest 
time and effort in an adequate teaching program. 
The peril of spiritual illiteracy which threatens us 
as a nation should arouse the Church and its con¬ 
stituency, as well as every other moral force in our 
communities, to a sacrificial outlay of money and 
consecrated personal effort which will turn the tide 
toward godliness and spiritual intelligence. 


IN THE LIFE OF TOMORROW 219 


A changed conception of the Church itself will 
have to take place in the minds of the congrega¬ 
tion. When talking with a young physician regard¬ 
ing his non-attendance at church, he jokingly re¬ 
marked that his mother attended church and repre¬ 
sented the family in this particular. Then, in the 
same vein, he added, “ In my business I feel that I 
do pretty well if I can get a chance to doctor one 
member of the family.” The fault with his logic 
was that he thought of the church as a hospital 
where the spiritually deficient are under treatment. 
I reminded him that the church is a school, and 
that all have need of its training and development. 

With this changed thought concerning the 
church’s mission even the architecture of the edi¬ 
fice may need remodeling to accommodate it to the 
purposes of a school. The superintendency and 
care of such an institution will doubtless require 
more than the labours of one pastor and the unpaid 
services of his wife. The local church may have 
to invest in experts of various kinds at adequate 
salaries, and provide the most modern equipment. 
No investment in money or men can be too great 
when the issues at stake are considered. When 
Horace Mann made a speech at the laying of the 
corner-stone of an institution for the reformation 
of wayward boys, he said that if only one boy were 
saved the effort would be worth all it cost. Some 
one asked him afterward if that statement was not 
an exaggerated one. His reply was, “ Not if it 
were my boy.” 

With all our efforts for the religious education 


220 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


of the masses we must be conscious of the fact that 
everything fails unless individual Christian char¬ 
acter is considered. Society is made up of in¬ 
dividual units and the problems of life will not be 
completely solved until each unit is correctly placed. 
Possibly there is danger that in the effort to get 
away from the objectionable features of an in¬ 
dividualistic Christianity we shall forget the appli¬ 
cation of truth to the personal life. Great evan¬ 
gelistic movements which seek to deal with men in 
the mass, large educational and missionary ad¬ 
vances, schemes for social uplift of various char¬ 
acter,—may all fail because of the lack of the 
personal touch. 

The youth who seriously attempts to reach the 
spiritual goal of a consecrated and serviceful life 
will find many hands extended to help him on his 
way. Even the unfortunate one who has wan¬ 
dered from childhood virtue and suffers in court 
and prison the penalty of his wrong-doing has a 
friendlier judge and kindlier keepers than a gen¬ 
eration ago. Nature, as though in accord with this 
wise policy, has long been more friendly to youth 
than to old age. A witty newspaper writer says, 
“ You seldom see an old man who is enthusiastic 
about winter.” But youth delights in such old- 
fashioned sports as snowballing, skating and slid¬ 
ing. Spring, with its first flowers, and summer 
with its dreamy atmosphere and outdoor oppor¬ 
tunities for labour and play, accord with the spirit 
of the young. Every bird that sings awakens a 
song of response in the soul of youth, and every 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MORROW 221 


wind that blows sweeps across the heart strings of 
childhood awakening waves of melody which de¬ 
light even the sensitive ear of age. The world 
which we commonly count as practical,—the world 
of trade, and the life of labour,—stretches out 
inviting arms to youth with a promise of golden 
reward. The world of thought and intellectual 
training,—which speaks of fitness for duty and the 
delights of fame,—calls with insistent voice. With 
such a goodly heritage and such alluring prospects 
the youth cannot be indifferent to his own interior 
resources and the eternal values of life. 

The young person who has recognized in the 
years of childhood his place in the Kingdom of 
God may find by an introspective view as the years 
of youth come on that his personal dedication to 
Christ is severely tested by foes without and 
seemingly unfriendly forces within. The time 
may come when everything which formerly seemed 
solid and substantial will tremble beneath his feet. 
A certain fundamental truth will be of great value 
to youth in this time of need. The teacher of 
youth can assist in settling and solidifying Chris¬ 
tian faith by showing how much the will has to do 
with the religious life. Doubtless there are many 
who go through years of Christian life subject to 
the bondage which an over-emotional type of 
Christianity has forced upon them, with little ap¬ 
preciation of the power for righteousness which 
abides within the energy of their own wills. The 
cultivation of the human will and its importance to 
Christianity should be magnified by religious teach- 


222 


THE YOUTH OP TO-DAY 


ers in a much greater degree than has usually been 
the case. It was the heart purpose of a captive 
youth in a far country that enabled Daniel to stand 
as an example of fidelity to the faith of his fathers. 
The reception of the Gospel message was condi¬ 
tioned by the Master Himself on the attitude of the 
human will when He said, “If any man willeth to 
do His will, he shall know of the teaching.” 

That conception of the Christian life which 
identifies it with a personal devotion to a Divine 
Friend, instead of an adherence to a set of laws 
or an acceptance of a formal creed tends also to 
simplify the matter of Christian living. The 
youth—in whom the element of hero-worship is 
strong—will readily respond to the appeal of per¬ 
sonality, and when the Christian life is simplified 
to this degree it becomes most like that which the 
Master taught His disciples by the new title which 
He conferred upon them when He said, “ I have 
called you friends.” 

In the memorable closing week of the Master’s 
earthly ministry He seemed to have specially val¬ 
ued the opportunity of being with His friends— 
perhaps because He was so soon to leave them. 
He had many long talks with His disciples in their 
favourite trysting places, and each night He went 
over the hill from the city of His fathers to lodge 
in the humble home of a young man friend of His 
at Bethany. The brother and the two younger 
sisters,—doubtless long orphaned,—did not feel 
alone in the world when He was near. Each night 
they watched for His coming, and each morning 


IN THE LIFE OF TO-MOEEOW 223 


they saw with reluctance His departure for a day 
of teaching in the temple courts of the Holy City. 
But one night,—though the sisters watched long, 
and the brother went to seek Him,—He did not 
come. 

That was the night in which the Great Friend 
was betrayed by the perfidy of a false disciple into 
the hands of those who had long been seeking His 
life. His fearlessness in condemning the sins of 
hypocritical pretenders, His faithfulness to the 
common people, and His fidelity to His high revela¬ 
tion of the spiritual life; these all aroused the bit¬ 
terness of His foes, and the night closed in about 
Him. The formalities of the trial being over, the 
indignities of the crown of thorns and the purple 
robe being past, He was led forth to Calvary. 
Upon the barbarous cross, an instrument of torture 
which He transformed to a sign of triumph by the 
incident of His death, He gave up His life with a 
prayer for His foes upon His lips. 

The culmination of the life of Jesus on the cross, 
and the memories of His resurrection appearances 
to His friends, as well as the crowded years of His 
teaching and travels, are the sources from which 
we draw our inspiration for a life in likeness to 
His own. The disciples entered into the life of the 
Master as one understands and enters into the life 
of his friend. Their fellowship with Him was so 
real that they did not look upon Him as really 
absent from them. Indeed, He had sent them 
forth upon a mission to the ends of the earth and 
promised them the constant solace ol His presence. 


224 


THE YOUTH OF TO-DAY 


Sustained by His Spirit and encouraged by His 
example they went forth to build for the days that 
were yet to dawn. We have entered into their 
labours and the legacies of their faith are ours. 
As we learn and teach in the present age, let us 
so labour that the coming day may see the vision 
of our completed task,—that the Youth of To-day 
may be fully prepared for the service they shall 
render in the Life of To-morrow. 


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